The area of robotics continues to hold the attention and interest of many curious experimentalists, hobbyists, investors, and professionals, and this interest is rapidly building momentum in combining computer science and robotic engineering. Currently, many robots used in practical applications are either controlled by humans or operate in a static environment; however, there is an ever-increasing interest in taking robots in a new direction that enables them to operate autonomously and interact with the outside world. From a software development perspective, this is an exciting prospect, with futuristic possibilities, and not simply a boring academic exercise in learning about control, sensory feedback, and information processing.

What tools are available today to begin this exciting journey? Two important tools are required: Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio and LEGO Mindstorms NXT. This is an affordable combination for any person proficient with .NET development and interested in breaking new ground with the development of real robotic software. Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio provides a platform for quickly writing high-level code, without having to deal with writing the low-level tasks that are not only time consuming to construct but also dependent on specific hardware. However, an important note here is that sometimes working in a multithreaded environment can be tricky, especially when it comes to remembering how threads work and are properly constructed. The multithreaded concept is extremely important given the amount of data involved and the communication associated with data collection coming from sensors in real time. So, if you haven’t spent time using locks in multithreaded .NET programs, this is probably a good time to brush up. From the hardware perspective, the LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot is relatively cheap to construct. LEGO Mindstorms NXT provides out-of-the-box software development flexibility because of its integration with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio.

Combining Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio and LEGO Mindstorms NXT is a good way to learn about robotics from the perspective of a software developer with an interest in robotics. What is Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio? It is a Windows-based environment for robot control and simulation. More importantly, it includes Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR), a .NET-based concurrent library implementation for managing asynchronous parallel tasks (remember the previously mentioned multithreading and locks). The good news is that the Visual Studio Express version and the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio are free. The bad news is that, in terms of hardware, LEGO Mindstorms NXT is not--cost depends on the combination of actuators and sensors beyond the base robotic configuration purchased. I recommend using a Bluetooth connector instead of a universal serial bus (USB) cord attached to the robot--especially for when the autonomous robot is moving about and interacting with the world.

Chapters 1 through 4 introduce robotics concepts, the software development environment (CCR and decentralized software services), the visual simulation environment, and the Microsoft Visual programming language. In chapters 5 through 8, the authors turn their attention to interaction with the robotic hardware, outlining the inputs and outputs to the robot, and control logic; they also describe how the software development environment can be used to control LEGO Mindstorms NXT. The final chapters (9 and 10) provide a real-world example and information on related academic courses, Web sites, and books.

I recommend this book only to those readers with a strong curiosity and interest in the field of robotics--that is, those willing to spend time and money on this journey. Take note: even though the book was written primarily for academia and hobbyists alike, readers who are familiar with both .NET and robotic hardware will also benefit from it. Such readers will appreciate the authors’ step-by-step approach to programming and constructing a basic robot that can interact with the world. This combination of a top-down approach and a step-by-step guide instructs the reader to take a holistic, system-based perspective rather than a traditional functional-component-based one when exploring the construction of an autonomous robot.