I am part of a engineering senior project team tasked with creating a design for 21 robots that are able to reliably avoid obstacles for an art exhibit. We have decided to use the MIT Cricket indoor positioning system to determine each robot's position. Position data will be sent wirelessly to a base station with RS232. Each robot has a Roboteq AX500 motor controller, which can be controlled by RS232. We are programming an application to "map" the room and robot positions, then choose a new position and calculate L and R motor commands for each robot.
What is the best programming language to interface with several virtual COM ports at once and easily create a GUI? We will also be running fairly complex triangulation algorithms and behavior algorithms, hopefully in parallel.
Right now we are looking at Visual Basic .NET, C# .NET, and C++. Any advice or insight will help. Thanks!