-weekly seminar presentation by Anirban Basumallik, M.Tech 2, ERTS Lab, IIT Bombay. 2nd September, 2010.

Demonstration
Burn the suitable program on the Firebird 5 that keeps reading the sensor values on the bot and communicates that over Xbee/serial port to the PC and keeps reading the motor values from Xbee/serial port (as received from the PC) and sets the motor accordingly
Run the suitable service on MSRDS 2008

Demonstration (contd)
The monitoring system on the web browser Console output Service state
Two services are orchestrating The ABMFirebird5 service; and The ABMWhiteLineFollowerFB5 service

How it is working
MSRDS Runtime

Firebird 5

ABMFirebird5 Service

Partnership ABMWhiteLineFollowerFB5 Service

Service

A service model [1]

Subscription & Partnership

A subscription model [4]

Components
MSRDS 2008 has the .NET framework at the base level
CCR layer exists over that No need of explicitly creating threads, using semaphores or need to synchronize It is operative in a way such that the whole system is responsive*, scalable* and efficient in dealing with failure Takes care of load balancing*, scheduling* and coordinating DSS layer exists over that Loosely coupled services interact through each other via partnership
* Claims by Microsoft, not verified by me

Other features: VPL

VPL Visual Programming Language Gives a GUI (user friendliness) angle to programming It is a data flow based programming model

A VPL Program [3]

Others: Simulation
VSE Visual Simulation Environment Hardware is expensive, difficult to debug, and hard for a team to work concurrently Simulation has a low barrier to entry, easy to prototype and test out new ideas Useful for education, good learning and debugging tool

Architecture [2]

Simulation and services [2]

MSRDS: Pros and Cons

Pros Design highly scalable, concurrent and distributed robotics applications.* Efficient backend and rich simulator. VPL: Makes simple robotics applications easy to compose Cons Knowledge of coding is required for some significant work. The complexity of C# Modelling of objects using third party software. Real Time constraint handling missing.
* Claims by Microsoft, not verified by me

References
[1] Microsoft Corporation. Dss documentation.

Website. http://msdn.microsoft.com/ [2] Microsoft Corporation. Video tutorials on simulation. Website. http://msdn.microsoft.com/enus/robotics/bb383569.aspx. [3] Microsoft Corporation. Vpl documentation. Website. http://msdn.microsoft.com/enus/library/bb483088.aspx. [4] Microsoft Corporation. Service Tutorial 4. Website. http://msdn.microsoft.com/enus/library/bb483060.aspx

THANK YOU