Microsoft upgrades robotics development tools

Microsoft’s efforts in developing tools for robotics took another step forward recently when the company released a preview of the next version of its programming platform.

Robotics Developer Studio 2008 builds on the original release, Robotics Studio 2006, according to Microsoft robotics group general manager Tandy Trower, and is due for release later this year. The company made a community technology preview of Robotics Developer Studio available for download on April 9. The name change lines up with existing product lines and better reflects its role as a development tool, the announcement noted.

The updated developer tools now allow the use of distributed LINQ queries to reduce network utilization and simplify service authoring. Runtime performance has also seen a boost, according to Trower, with the company estimating interservice throughput gains of 150% to 300%, between nodes as well as within a node. According to the company, services now load twice as fast as they had before.

The tools themselves have seen other work as well. The Visual Programming Language tool now allows users to visually define computational domains for managing distributed program execution. Meanwhile, the simulation environment tool now can record and play back simulations, and its floorplan editor simplifies the definition of complex interiors and building structures.

Since the launch of Robotics Studio 2006, more than 200,000 copies of the software have been downloaded, according to Microsoft. The software is free for noncommercial applications and must be licensed for commercial use.

The company also announced a virtual robotics competition, called RoboChamps, which was expected to launch April 21; details are available at www.robochamps.com.