Customer Reviews

Programming Microsoft® Robotics Studio

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a good start but I can't wait for the next edition (if there is one). The author attempted too much coverage for the limited number of pages (a little over 200). I have completed all of the Microsoft Tutorials for MSRS and this book is a refreshing change. The author begins with coverage of SERVICES and does not include any illustrations. Microsoft Tutorials and Powerpoint presentations have several great illustrations on SERVICES. Also, the coverage of SERVICES is completed in an orderly manner but not in the same order used in the coding chapters (chapters 5 and later). There are the expected typos, as you expect in a new book. A couple can cause frustration until you figure out what happened.

I will say that MSRS books are very much needed. While MSRS is not a huge software product, it contains several new concepts for many programmers. I have a background in C, C++, C#, and VB. MSRS is best when using C#.

In summary:
1. I would have liked to have had a thicker book (like the one coming out in June from other authors.
2. The author of this book made the decision to only do superficial coverage of MSRS subjects such as Simulation and VPL which I believe will be used quite a bit in academic enviorments and more everywhere in the future. The VPL feature of C# code generation is important and deserved move attention.
3. The author's style of writing is great and very readable. I wish her well and look forward to a 2nd edition.

This book, much like Professional Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (Wrox Programmer to Programmer), gives good examples, but only for what is explained. If you are interested in doing something like converting hardware robotics applications to simulations, then this is NOT the book for you. Also, to do the examples, you would require to have the robots, and each chapter makes use of a different robot.

If you are only interested in the hardware and not the simulation, then this book is excellent. However simulations (one of the KEY features in MSRS-MRDS) is sorely missed. Especially in conversion between hardware and simulation projects.

This book is not very helpful for someone trying to learn MRDS. You would be better off sticking to the tutorials on the MS website. There is very little detail about how to actually get started writing robotics software. The best I can say about it is it references other interesting projects. I wonder if this author is actually a MRDS developer because if she was she would have gone into much more detail about the nuts and bolts of MRDS.

When I first purchased this book I thought it would be an instructional guide on how to program generic robots, but when I got it all the chapthers relate to a specific robot (iRobot, Lego NXT, etc). This made it frustrating to me because the author expects you to have this robot if you want to follow along with the guide. In my opinion, all the chapthers should be step up to run in the simulation with text on how to transfer your code to the robot if you have one. Also the authors style of writing is poor for an instructional guide. Critical steps should be bolded in the text to signify that this is a critical step. There was often times where I would get unexpected results doing the guide because a critical step was buried in a large paragraph. This book is not for somebody that doesn't have a background in C# (which I do) or at least a similar programming language. Granted teaching generic programming would be beyond the scope of this book, but if you don't have any programming background this book is not for you.

I applaude the effort, but this book is written for people with programming and robotics experience. There is much effort in explaining what but not how. At times I felt I was reading the MS verbage.

The greatest benefit of MSRS is the Simulation feature. You can get your feet wet in Robotics for free. That should have been the focus for the book. Everything should have been reference from there.

I knew I was in trouble when the first chapter didn't make a robot move and spent most of the time on concepts.

I was hoping for step by step tour of MSRS, but I think the value in this book is after you out of the novice stage of MSRS.

Someone wants to know about Robotics Studio, this is a good book to start with.