Robotics has on occasion fallen victim to overly optimistic and unrealistic expectations. Many of the reasons for this failure to accurately predict its future are because the field is extremely complex. Even though some of the limitations involving mechatronics have been addressed, there are still many software problems left to tackle. This chapter will limit predictions and specific information to a time period within the next five years. It will also cover areas that are well established or applications already in development.
The current version of Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS) is 1.5. Sometime in the first half of 2008, the MSRS team expects to release a Community Technology Preview (CTP) for version 2.0. The CTP is the first step toward releasing the final version, and the team will look for feedback from the development community before the final release.
The 2.0 version should provide significant enhancements to the 1.5 version. Most notably, there will be big improvements to VPL that will allow it to be useful when programming embedded devices across the network and across various embedded operating systems (OS). In fact, the 2.0 version will prime the way for MSRS to be tightly integrated with Windows Mobile devices.
In late 2007, the Mobile and Embedded Devices (MED) division at Microsoft (see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/embedded/default.aspx) adopted Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR), Decentralized Software Services (DSS), and VPL as its distributed programming model. The announcement was made at the September 2007 Embedded Systems Conference in Boston, and you can obtain more information from the following transcript: www.windowsfordevices.com/files/misc/Kevin_Dallas_ESC_East2007.pdf. Distributed embedded systems will have a great impact on developers of sensor networks and factory automation applications.
Throughout the writing of this book, I have been fortunate enough to have several members of the MSRS team review each chapter for technical accuracy. George Chrysanthakopoulos (refer to the sidebar titled Profile: George Chrysanthakopoulos and Henrik F. Nielsen) recently responded to my question about whether MSRS would be integrated with other product offerings with the following:
...the technologies in MSRS are already being seen as critical for a variety of non-robotic applications, ranging from sensor networks and industrial automation to managing concurrency on high-end systems. There are plans to integrate the CCR with the mainstream Microsoft concurrency effort, the Parallel Computing Framework, as well.
Profile: George Chrysanthakopoulos and Henrik F. Nielsen
George Chrysanthakopoulos and Henrik F. Nielsen are two of just a handful of developers on the MSRS team. Even though the team is small, the experience and proficiency of its members make it a highly productive group. Chrysanthakopoulos, who holds a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Washington, and Nielsen, who received a master’s degree in engineering from the Aalborg University and worked at CERN, are responsible for designing the key technologies that drive MSRS — the DSS and CCR models.
Nielsen, who has worked with Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) and Roy Fielding (designer of the Representational State Transfer, or REST, model), is one of the principal architects for several of the HTTP and SOAP specifications. Before joining Microsoft in 1999, he worked on the technical staff at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Chrysanthakopoulos, who has worked in several groups at Microsoft, joined the Advanced Technologies and Strategy group in 2003. It was there that he met Nielsen, and the two of them realized they had a similar vision for creating a Web-based distribution model based on a state-driven approach.
During a two-year period, Chrysanthakopoulos and Nielsen worked on both the CCR and DSS. DSS uses the CCR to manage the enormous amount of asynchronous processing that a distributed model requires. The work that Chrysanthakopoulos and Nielsen did eventually led them to the MSRS group because DSS and the CCR seemed the perfect foundation for robotics applications. Chrysanthakopoulos currently holds the title of Software Architect and Development Manager, while Nielsen serves as the team’s Group Program Manager.