Microsoft® Robotics Developer Studio 4 enables hobbyists and professional or non-professional developers to create robotics applications targeting a wide range of scenarios. This release is an update that has the functionality of the previous RDS 2008 R3 Standard Edition with the addition of support for the Kinect sensor and a defined

Reference Platform

, also referred to as MARK (Mobile Autonomous Robot using Kinect).

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio can support a broad set of robotics
platforms by either running directly on the platform (if it has an
embedded PC running Windows) or controlling the robot from a Windows PC
through a communication channel such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth®.

In addition to providing support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010,
Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4 provides a Visual Programming
Language (VPL) which allows developers to create applications simply by
dragging and dropping components onto a canvas and wiring them together.

The powerful Visual Simulation Environment (VSE) provides a
high-fidelity simulation environment powered by NVIDIA™ PhysX™ engine
for running game-quality 3D simulations with real-world physics
interactions.

To help developers getting started, Robotics Developer Studio contains extensive

Documentation

and a large set of samples and tutorials that illustrate how to write
applications ranging from simple "Hello Robot" to complex applications
that simultaneously run on multiple robots.

Make sure you have the latest
service pack and critical updates for Windows 7. To find recent security
updates, visit Windows Update.

1. Install the version of Visual Studio 2010 with C# if you plan to write new services for RDS
2. Install Kinect for Windows SDK V1
3. Install Silverlight 4.0 SDK
4. Click the Download button on this page to start the download
5. Do one of the following:
   • To start the installation immediately, click Run.
   • To save the download to your computer for installation at a later time, click Save. (Recommended)
   • To cancel the installation, click Cancel.
6. Answer the prompts. Note that the CCR and DSS Runtime will be
   installed first as well as some pre-requisites. RDS requires .NET 4.0
   but does not install it because this comes with Visual Studio. If you
   want to remove RDS later, you must also remove the CCR and DSS Runtime
   afterwards.
7. When the installation is complete, look in the Start Menu under Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4 and run Build All Samples. This is a separate manual step that takes several minutes.

RDS 4 is an upgrade to RDS 2008 R3, but it
install into a separate folder. If you already have RDS 2008 R3, then
RDS 4 will install side-by-side. However, the Security Model for RDS 4
is different. Please read the Release Notes for more information.

For an overview of RDS 4 see the

Datasheet

.

• Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio Forums
• Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio Online Documentation
• Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio Developer Center
• Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio Home Page