Here is a agglomeration of 15 free online videos on Microsoft Robotics Development Studio. The Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is a Windows-based environment for robot control and simulation. You can download MRDS 2008 Express Edition at no cost.

Please click on this site to download Microsoft Robotics Development Studio: microsoft robotics development studio

Be sure to click on the following site to look at a catalog of videos: microsoft robotics

4 Components of MRDS:

* CCR (Concurrency and Coordination Runtime) – makes asynchronous programming simple. The CCR makes it simple to create programs to handle asynchronous input from multiple robotics sensors and output to motors and actuators. With the use of CCR, we don’t need to do any manual threads management. This may be definitely splendid in handling concurrency and partial failure. CCR has a failure handling mechanism called Causalities. This is in essence a generalization of Try / Catch for multiple threads. But this is for many machines and processes working in synchronous fashion. This is the base of Robotics architecture by Microsoft. You can even use this component for the applications running on a PC instead of a robot. CCR is available in the form of a dynamic link library used by any .net language.

* DSS (Decentralized Software Services) Is the services architecture, and it is a companion to CCR. This is based on Service Oriented Architecture. This makes it possible to write up applications distributed and modular. This allows you to execute your code in the processing work horses and use anywhere in the distributed environment. The DSS makes it simple to access, and respond to, a robot’s state using a Web browser or Windows-based application. This enables real-time monitoring of robotics sensors and real-time response to motors and actuators.

* VPL (Microsoft Visual Programming Language) Is a visual programming tool that is used for creating and debugging robot applications, web-based and windows-based interfaces.

* VSE (Visual Simulation Environment) Allows one to simulate the behavior of robots in a virtual world using NVIDIA PhysX technology (3D engine) that includes advanced physics.

The Runtime environment Has two main parts: the CCR and the DSS. The runtime is based on a lightweight REST-oriented services model. Making it REST based has made the services and applications to be independent of each other. They may be on the same machine or distributed across several machines connected through any method. When we talk with regard to REST based, This means that the resources should be available by query strings. These services are available as resources to the other services, applications or User Interfaces. This is, in reality, how Microsoft is able to promise low coupling between services. The Runtime supports from 8-bit to 32-bit robots. These robots may range from Toy Robots to Industrial Robots.

Microsoft VPL Makes it possible for one to create and debugrobotics programs with very little effort. Just drag and drop blocks that represent services, and connect them. It is also possible to take a collection of connected blocks and reuse them as a single block elsewhere in the program. VPL follows the Observer Pattern. This implies that it is not based on Control flow but on data flow which enables some program elements to get executed when some data arrives. VPL provides a model-driven approach to develop and orchestrate services.

Easily Simulate Robotics applications using realistic 3D simulated models. Since testing with real robots is often expensive, it saves money to start out in a simulated environment first and then move to real robots once the concepts have been proven to work. Microsoft Visual Simulation Environment (VSE) is based on Microsofts XNA Framework and the rendering engine uses AGEIA PhysX Technology from AGEIA Technologies Inc.. AGEIA Technologies Inc. Is a pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics, enabling real-world physics simulation for robot models. PhysX simulations can also be accelerated using AGEIA hardware. These simulations may be recorded and saved as XML files and played back over and over again.

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6 Main Features of MRDS:

* Reuse Modular Services Using a Composable model

Develop high-level functions using simple parts, providing for reuse of code modules as well as better reliability and replaceability. For example, a lower-level sensor service could be integrated into a navigation service.

* Scalable and Extensible Platform

The RDS programming model can be applied to a variety of robot hardware platforms, enabling users to transfer their skills across multiple platforms. The programming interfaces may be used to develop applications on single or multi-core processors.

* Easily extend Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio Functionality

Third parties can extend the functionality of RDS by providing additional libraries and services. Hardware or software vendors can make their products easily compatible with RDS.

* Supports both remotely connected (PC-based) and robot-based (autonomous) application scenarios

Remotely connected scenarios enable communication from a PC to the robot through a serial port, Bluetooth®, 802.11 (WiFi), or RF modem. Programs can also execute natively on PC-based robots running one of the Microsoft Windows operating systems, enabling fully autonomous operation.

* Develop using a generous choice of programming languages

MRDS allows you to access the runtime services using the following programming languages: C# and Visual Basic .NET, JScript, and IronPython

* Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio allows one to use numerous packages to add other services to the suite.

Those other services include:
O Soccer Simulation

O Sumo Competition by Microsoft

O a community-developed Maze Simulator which is a program to create worlds with walls that may be explored by a virtual robot

Sample Applications:

* Princeton University’s DARPA Urban Grand Challenge autonomous car entry was programmed entirely with MRDS.

* In 2008 Microsoft launched a simulated robotics competition named RoboChamps using MRDS, 4 challenges were available : maze, sumo, urban, and mars rover. The simulated environment and robots used by the competition were created by SimplySim and the competition was sponsored by KIA Motors.

Supported Robots:

* Aldebaran Robotics

* CoroWare

* Lego Mindstorms NXT

* KUKA Robotics

* Robosoft’s robots

* Segway

* RoboticsConnection

* RoombaDevTools by RoboDynamics

* WowWeeRoboSapien via the USB-UIRT device

* e-nuvo WALK

Is it a good idea looking up old girlfriends on Facebook or Myspace?

Looking her up turned out to be one of the worst ideas that I could have possibly considered. Currently I am dating a girl that is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I didn’t want to look up my old Ex girlfriend To start a romantic relationship with her. Since I was 5 years old and throughout my childhood, this girl had always been a very good friend. We were joined at the hip for many years until we both graduated from high school and moved away to college.

Knowing her this long gave us both great insight on each others lives and I had wanted to contact her to catch up for a very long time. It started when I found my old girlfriend on Myspace. I sent her a friend request and we started up catching up on old times through Email. We spent the next few weeks catching up on old times with her through email. This was great and she even helped me get in touch with more old friends from school.

Things were going great for a while and we were contacting each other back in forth through Facebook when everything went bad. My Old girlfriend Started calling my house and even driving by my home late at night.

I had told her about my current girlfriend and the fact that I was very happy. I asked her several times not to call my house because the late night calls were upsetting my girlfriend but the calls proceeded.

At this point I decided to stop all contact with my ex girlfriend and I let her know my email! A few hours after I had sent her an email stopping all contact she calls me at work! She then proceeds to yell at me that she still has feelings for me and she wants another chance at us being together.

Even after my request she still continued to contact me by email and phone. I eventually had to receive a retraining order on her. The whole situation put a heavy strain on my relationship with my current girlfriend

The restraining order worked. The old girlfriend did stop her calls and late night drive bys but the whole situation has taught me a valuable lesson. I was forced to remove any and all of my contact information from the Internet. I guess I will stick with staying with the friends that I have .

Here is a collection of over 10 hours of video tutorials on Visual Studio 2010. The collection subsists of two video series. One video series is from the msdev.com website, and it is presented by Nancy Strickland. Nancy is a instructor at IT Mentors. The other series is from Learn Visual Studio, and it is presented by Bob Tabor. The Learn Visual Studio Series requires that you become a member in order to see those videos.

Be sure to click on this website to view a catalog of webcasts: visual studio 2010 beta

The nickname for Visual Studio 2010 is “Hawaii.” A CTP (Community Technology Preview) variation was published in 2008 as a preinstalled virtual hard disk. In May 2009, the VS 2010Beta 1 was published as an installable variation, unlike the previous CTP version that was already installed as a virtual hard disk.

You must click on the following link to view a catalog of videos: visual studio 2010 videos

The IDE for Visual Studio 2010 is supposed to abate the complexity and clutter by providing better support for:

• Floating tool windows
• Multiple document windows
• Multi-monitor support

The IDE has been rewritten in WPF and the internals have been redesigned using MEF (Managed Exensibility Framework). New-fashioned additions to the programming languages include:

• F# (multi-paradigm programming language ML)
• M – textual modelling language
• Quadrant (visual model designer)

You need to click on this link to look at a catalog of webcasts: visual studio 2008 video tutorials

Visual Studio 2010 will come with version 4.0 of the NET Framework and it will target developing applications for Windows 7. Silverlight is integrated into VS 2010 and there is improved support for parallel programming. Intellisense and search abilities have been much improved in the new variant.

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