Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 CTP April Available

Yesterday (9th April 2008) Microsoft Robotics group announced the first Community Technical Preview (CTP) of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008. This platform in the thrid version of the formerly named Microsoft Robotics Studio programming platform. The new Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 (RDS 08) is expected to improve the runtime performance up to 300 percent. As explained by Tandy Trower, General Manager of the Robotics Group, at the RoboBusiness conference in Pittsburgh RDS 08 is based on a more synchronous and distributed approach to programming.

As reported by Henrik F Nielsen in the MSRS MSDN Forums, key new features and improvements (in relation to current Robotics Studio 1.5 released version) are:

- Improved security model with support for Message Level Authorization using Role-based access control allowing to fine-grained control of who can access services and how.

- Support for LINQ queries in DSSP subscriptions enabling applications to create complex queries that can be executed close to the data source instead of requiring moving data across the network

- Support for creating applications that run on multiple DSS nodes using Visual Programming Language and DSS Manifest Editor. This makes it much simpler to create applications that run across nodes, either on the same machine or across the network. When an application containing multiple nodes is to be started, VPL creates individual deploy packages for each node and fires them up across the network.

- Support for record and playback functionality in Visual Simulation Environment enabling it to record the position and orientation of each entity and save that information to a file which later can be replayed.

- Support for storing simulation media resources such as texture maps, bitmaps, and mesh files directly as part of the CLR assemblies in the form of embedded resources rather than as external files.

- New Simulation floor plan editor which allows the user to put together walls, doors, windows, etc. to represent the interior of a room, house, or other building.

I expect to test it in the next few days, so I'll come up with some comments and feedback on these new version.

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