In June 2006, Trower and a small group of developers he assembled announced the availability of MSRS. MSRS was the direct result of the interviews Trower had done with the robotics community. It was the platform he hoped would solve many of the obstacles facing robotics researchers and potential hobbyists.
MSRS is a Microsoft Windows–based environment that offers a service-oriented runtime, visual authoring tools, tutorials, and documentation. The MSRS toolkit provides a platform and tools that can be used by both commercial and academic robotics researchers. MSRS also offers a visual programming language that can be used by students and hobbyists. Since Version 1.0 was released in late 2006, the robotics group at Microsoft has released one major version of MSRS. Version 1.5 improves on the existing product offering by including significant enhancements to the visual simulation environment and visual programming language.
Even though the development group creating MSRS was small (only 11 developers), they were able to get a release together very quickly. This was partly because MSRS is based on the Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR). The CCR is a .NET library designed to make asynchronous programming much easier than it was previously. Coincidently, it was being developed around the same time that Trower was investigating ways to make robotics easier. The MSRS team that Trower put together consisted of two developers from the CCR development team. They were able to leverage the work done by the CCR group to deliver MSRS as quickly as possible.
The latest release of MSRS, version 1.5 (available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads) included several enhancements that made the product much easier to work with. MSRS is a work in progress, and the team has been hard at work improving the tools and services that come with MSRS. They are working with several third-party hardware vendors to integrate MSRS with existing robot hardware.
MSRS comes with two forms of licensing: commercial and noncommercial. If you are a student, hobbyist, or someone looking to learn more about robotics, you would need only the noncommercial license. This means you will not attempt to make money using any of the robots you work with. If this is all you require, MSRS is free to download (available at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/robotics/default) and use.
If you are a commercial developer and you want to use your robot in a way that will generate revenue, you can purchase a commercial license for $399 (U.S. dollars). The commercial license allows you to distribute up to 200 copies of any runtime components you create with the software.
Because MSRS runs on the .NET Framework and you will use Microsoft Visual Studio to design your robotics application, you can use any of the languages supported by the .NET Framework. Most of the samples and tutorials available with MSRS are written with C# or Visual Basic .NET. The sample code used throughout this book will be written in C#, but this does not mean you cannot use Visual Basic .NET if that is the language you prefer.
MSRS also allows you to use the Python scripting language, which is an extensible and object-oriented language distributed under an open-source license. Microsoft offers a version of Python that works with .NET called Iron Python. MSRS includes sample code written with Iron Python for those programmers who prefer that language. For more information on Python, visit http://www.python.org/.
MSRS introduces a graphical programming language called Visual Programming Language (VPL). VPL offers beginning programmers and students a visual interface that allows them to use drag-and-drop techniques to build a robotics program. VPL can also be useful for experienced programmers who want to quickly build an application prototype. Programs written in VPL can be converted easily into C# applications. Therefore, an application that began in VPL can be extended and enhanced using Visual Studio and the .NET Framework.