Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio

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Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio

Developer(s)	Microsoft in association with the community
Initial release	December 18, 2006; 17 years ago (2006-12-18)
Stable release	4.0 / March 8, 2012; 12 years ago (2012-03-08)
Operating system	Tested on Windows 8 Consumer Preview but not supported until final release of Windows 8 Windows XP SP2, Vista, Windows 7, Windows Embedded 7, Server 2003 up to 2008 R3 CE 5.0, CE 6.0 up to Windows Server 2008 R2
Type	Robotics suite
License	Various
Website	www.microsoft.com/robotics/

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (Microsoft RDS, MRDS) is a discontinued Windows-based environment for robot control and simulation that was aimed at academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers and handled a wide variety of robot hardware. It requires a Microsoft Windows 7 operating system or later.

RDS is based on Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR): a .NET Framework-based concurrent library implementation for managing asynchronous parallel tasks. This technique involves using message-passing and a lightweight services-oriented runtime, Decentralized Software Services (DSS), which allows orchestrating multiple services to achieve complex behaviors.

Features include: a visual programming tool, Microsoft Visual Programming Language (VPL) to create and debug robot applications, web-based and windows-based interfaces, 3D simulation (including hardware acceleration), easy access to a robot's sensors and actuators. The primary programming language is C#.

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio includes support for packages to add other services to the suite. Those currently available include Soccer Simulation and Sumo Competition by Microsoft, and a community-developed Maze Simulator, a program to create worlds with walls that can be explored by a virtual robot, and a set of services for OpenCV.