What's the best news that you can get in a week? Robot news of course! Everybody likes robots.
Microsoft have announced version 1.5 of their visual studio based Robotics Studio, their only product that targets both Lego sets and DARPA grand challenge automated vehicles. Updates include support for the compact .NET framework, some updates to the simulator and some graphical rapid development using something called microsoft visual programming language.
I can even get a 360 reference in here by pointing out that the 360 controller can be used to control your robots. There's even pictures out there of this being done for real, but I don't know if this was done using robotics studio given how easy it is to actually use the controller in your software.
What's better than one bit of robot news? Two bits of course. Version 2 of LEGO Digital Designer is out, and now it supports all the bits in the LEGO Mindstorms NXT kit so you can design your robots on computer first and share designs easily.
So there you go, LEGO, Xbox 360, visual studio, cars that can drive themselves and military robots in the same post. How's that for diverse?
And yes, I play with LEGO still. Only now I code for it in C#.
posted @ Wednesday, July 11, 2007 1:44 PM