Microsoft Robotics Development Studio released for free (for real this time)

[Admin]

Apparently no one wanted it, and competition was better, so its now being released for free:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-software/052010-microsoft-shifts-robotics-strategy-makes-robotics-studio-available-free

Of course, thats not how their press worded it, but we all know the truth . . .

Anyone willing to try out their simulator? The previous version I heard was an absolute pain to use, I wonder if its improved enough to be worth my time learning .NET . . .

(if no major changes were made, I definitely recommend *against* bothering with RDS)

[little-c]

I have it, and can't work out how to use it. (read gave up)

unless your paying me, I can't be bothered to use it.

[Cristi_Neagu]

I had a look over RDS some time ago. I reached the conclusion that the capabilities of this platform are amazing. So, naturally, i started learning it. Only trouble is that i have yet to find some useful material on it. I have never found an answer to the question: if i made my own robot, how do i connect it to RDS so they speak the same language? All of their examples and tutorials are based on preexisting drivers (or whatever those things that translate RDS code to robot specific code are called). I haven't found one shred of information as to how to write your own drivers for your robot.

In conclusion: great program, poor documentation.

[GearMotion]

Yes, OK, it is in my sig - but I'm not trying to over promote RobotBASIC. RB isn't my work. It interfaces to hardware I'm rather fond of. In fact it is that capability that I like the best as it makes for a free and simple language to control real-world things from a PC. But it also had some robot simulation capability, and a documented way to connect your robot to a PC and convert the simulation to real world actions. See robotbasic.org

[Admin]

if i made my own robot, how do i connect it to RDS so they speak the same language?

You have to write your own library in .NET that converts lego-block style GUI programming (the type that children can do) into C code. Then any compiler of your choosing can convert that C to .hex.


Much easier to just use WebbotLib and call it a day.

[teoxan]

There's a company, Robotics Connection (http://www.roboticsconnection.com/ ), that developed a hardware platform to use it. It's called Serializer and it's a development platform in which you can plug any sensors, actuators, and communicate with Robotics Studio and write your own code using C# or Visual Basic. It gives you ready software stuff for all major sensors.
It's a nice work, basically it was a "bridge" connecting robotics and .NET platform.

There was one issue though, you can't build an autonomus robot with the Serializer and actually i find AXON and the Webbotlib combination much more robust and
trully robotics work

theo