Microsoft has produced an innovative new Software Development Kit (SDK) that uses C# to build software for robots, called Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (MRDS).

What is MRDS?

MRDS includes a sophisticated 3D simulation environment for virtual robots. This free SDK includes a virtual environment, and allows a user to drive a robot just minutes after installation. The MRDS Samples site (mrdssamples.codeplex.com) hosts variety of code samples written in C#, the preferred language for MRDS. The best feature of MRDS is that it’s free for personal, academic, and development use, and its sophisticated run-time environment makes it easy to write powerful asynchronous and distributed applications. In fact, several large corporations are using this environment for non-robotics applications, for handling robust web pages and financial transactions. In its short life, MRDS has already been built into robots that participated in the DARPA Urban Challenge, and swum underwater in a robotic submarine.