MS Robotics Studio
MS Robotics Studio was created to make robotics a little less scary for programmers, by removing some of the extreme hardware dependencies – like circuit boards, etc. It has a VPL environment somewhat similar to Visual Studio. There are drag and drop components with easy to configure events and properties. I know what you are thinking, BORING – it’s just a GUI. It’s not. You can write code to your little heart’s content in C#. There are also blocks of reusable code that you can use.
Now for the fun part – There is a simulation environment with XNA based canned “worlds”! This is a big selling point for me because you can “build” a virtual robot, program your components and events and it works in the simulated environment. Warning! In a virtual world you cannot pick up your robot when it flips, you have to start over. Although, in the session, it was suggested that you could build TWO robots and program one to pick-up the other when it falls down. LOL! Gotta love the creativity of coders on caffeine.
Lego Mindstorm
I know what you are thinking now – virtual? That’s no fun at all! Well, if you are serious about learning MS Robotics and have a few hundred to spend, you can buy yourself a shiny new Lego Mindstorm kit for the bargain price of $279 on Amazon. The kit includes some nice breakable plastic to create your robot with as well as a “brick”, which is the brain of the bot and works with BlueTooth to connect to the PC.
Nate did have a Lego Mindstorm for his presentation. Within about 5 minutes, he dropped a Xbox 360 controller onto the drag and drop, changed the port for the Bluetooth, changed some properties and events for the brick and controller – and voila! Nate used the Xbox 360 controller to move the mindstorm forward and in reverse and within a few seconds we had broken plastic. Awesome!
I know, I know, I was thinking the same thing. “I’m going to pay $280 for something that is going to break?” Well, if you’re smart, you (a) won’t put it on a table and run it and (b) you will code it so that it stops before it goes off a cliff, since it does have sensors. Speaking of sensors, if you want to get really “beastly”, as my teenager would say, you could stack bricks so that you have sensors on both sides. You can even stack a mindstorm brick with a droid and program the droid sensors.
There are some other choices besides Lego, though it is the most reasonably priced. Bobot was mentioned, though noted that there is little to no documentation for it. We also discussed iRobots models, including bomb detectors and vacuums. I wonder if they built one that would vacuum while it looks for a bomb?
Since it has BlueTooth and you have internet, you can also use API’s to connect to sites. For instance, you could make your robot sing on rainy mornings by checking weather.com for a 90% chance or more of rain for your zip.
Additonal Information
The speaker was Nathan Blevins @ http://nathan Blevins.com.
He did mention a few tips:
1. Bluetooth sucks
2. Batteries, batteries, batteries
3. Spend some time on CCR or you’ll be sorry
4. Not a lot of documentation on other robots outside of Lego
http://www.microsoft.com/robotics/
Overall, I was thoroughly amused for an hour, which believe me is sometimes a challenge. What did I enjoy most about it? I see my code work on a PC all the time, but to see my code cause a robot to fly off a table, something you can touch and break… that’s worth getting up early for.
Oooh.... I forgot to mention the best part! MS Robotics Studio is completely FREE and there is a new release available from the link I posted above. Have fun!
-a
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