Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (MRDS) offers an exciting new wayto program robots in the Windows environment. With key portions of the MRDS code available in source form, it is readily extensible and offers numerous opportunities for programmers and hobbyists. This comprehensive book illustrates creative ways to use the tools and libraries in MRDS so you can start building innovative new robotics applications.The book begins with a brief overview of MRDS and then launches into MRDS concepts and takes a look at fundamental code patterns that can be used in MRDS programming. You'll work through examplesall in C#of common tasks, including an examination of the physics features of the MRDS simulator. As the chapters progress, so does the level of difficulty and you'll gradually evolve from navigating a simple robot around a simulated course to controlling simulated and actual robotic arms, and finally, to an autonomous robot that runs with an embedded PC or PDA. What you will learn from this bookHow to program in the multi-threaded environment provided by the concurrency and coordination runtimeSuggestions for starting and stopping services, configuring services, and packaging your services for deploymentTechniques for building new services from scratch and then testing themHow to build your own simulated environments and robots using the Visual Simulation EnvironmentWhat robots are supported under MRDS and how to select one for purchaseWho this book is forThis book is for programmers who are interested in becoming proficient in the rapidly growing field of robotics. All examples featured in the book are in C#, which is the preferred language for MRDS.