Microsoft Robotics Studio is a framework for building robotics applications. It includes components for sensors, actuators, and an orchestrator to coordinate them. More complex robotic apps can include additional components like cameras, motors, and flame detectors. The framework uses services and runtimes like the Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR) to simplify coding robot behaviors and the Decentralized System Services (DSS) to provide a service hosting environment. Simulation and visualization tools allow testing applications without actual expensive robots. The presentation provides an overview of the Microsoft Robotics Studio framework and its capabilities.
Concurrency and Coordination RuntimeHandling of sensory input and controlling actuators must be dealt with concurrently as otherwise actuators can get starved and sensors ignored.CCR enables coordination of messages without the use of manual threading, locks, semaphores, etc.
Development environment designed on a graphical dataflow-based programming model rather than control flow typically found in conventional programming. Dataflow program is more like a series of workers on an assembly line, who do their assigned task as the materials arrive.As a result VPL is well suited to programming a variety of concurrent or distributed processing scenarios.