On the Benefits of Component-Defined Real-Time Visualization of Robotics Software

The idea of component-defined visualization is introduced and benefits for different challenges in robotics software development are discussed — including system maintenance, component integration, and identification of critical behavior or malfunction. Design considerations for integration in state-of-the-art robotic software frameworks are presented — with an open source implementation for the Finroc framework as a proof-of-concept. Its use in two very different autonomous systems is illustrated. Experiments with these systems indicate that the proposed approach has in fact relevant advantages.