VPL Tutorials Overview

Article
03/01/2012

Glossary Item Box

Robotics Basic Tutorials: Basic Robotics Tutorials Overview

VPL Hands On Labs: Overview of Hands On Labs

Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio

VPL Tutorials Overview

The basic Microsoft Visual Programming Language (VPL) tutorials help you to get started writing your first programs using VPL. The tutorials take you from the classic "Hello World" through to how to create your own Activity to modularize the application.

The Basic Robotics Tutorials for VPL help you get started writing your very first service for a robot. The tutorials guide you from getting input from a single sensor, to controlling an actuator, then to being able to write a "drive-by-wire" application where the robot can be moved around.

In addition, the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT samples and tutorials provide a variety of services especially designed for use with VPL.

And finally, the VPL Hands On Labs provide more advanced examples of using VPL with robots.

VPL Tutorial 1 - Hello World

This tutorial is the classic introduction for most programming languages that displays the words "Hello World". Using Microsoft VPL, the programmer can do this with two activity blocks - a Data block and the Simple Dialog block.

VPL Tutorial 1 - Hello World

VPL Tutorial 2 - Incrementing a Value

This tutorial introduces some of the other basic dataflow control activities included in VPL. It creates a variable, initializes it, then counts to ten, speaking the value on each iteration using Text-To-Speech.

VPL Tutorial 2 - Incrementing a Value

VPL Tutorial 3 – Create Your Own Activity

This tutorial uses the same scenario as VPL Tutorial 2 - Incrementing a Value, but illustrates how the programmer can create their own activities to modularize the application.