Tools
The tools that allow to develop an MRDS application contain a graphical environment (Microsoft Visual Programming Language : VPL) command line tools allow you to deal with Visual Studio projects (VS Express version is enough) in C#, and 3D simulation tools.
- Visual Programming Language is a graphical development environment that uses a service and activity catalog.
- They can interact graphically, a service or an activity is represented by a block that has inputs and outputs that just need to be dragged from the catalog to the diagram.
- Linking can be done with the mouse, it allows you to define if signals are simultaneous or not, permits you to perform operations on transmitted values...
- VPL also allows you to generate the code of new "macro" services from diagrams created by users.
- It is possible in VPL to easily customize services for different hardware elements.
- RDS 3D simulation environment allows you to simulate the behavior of robots in a virtual world using NVIDIA PhysX technology (3D engine originally written by Ageia) that includes advanced physics.
- There are several simulation environments in RDS. These environments were developed by SimplySim
- Apartment
- Factory
- Modern House
- Outdoor
- Urban
- Many examples and tutorials are available for the different tools, which permits a fast understanding of MRDS. Several applications have been added to the suite, such as Maze Simulator, or Soccer Simulation which is developed by Microsoft.
- The Kinect sensor can be used on a robot in the RDS environment. RDS also includes a simulated Kinect sensor. The Kinect Services for RDS are licensed for both commercial and non-commercial use. They depend on the Kinect for Windows SDK.
Read more about this topic: Microsoft Visual Programming Language
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