Advancing the Design of Visual Debugging Tools for Roboticists

Programming robots is a challenging task exacer-bated by software bugs, faulty hardware, and environmental fac-tors. When coding issues arise, traditional debugging techniques such as output logs or print statements that may help in typical computer applications are not always useful for roboticists. As a result, roboticists often leverage visualizations that depict various aspects of robot, sensor, and environment states. In this paper, we explore various design approaches towards such visualizations for robotics debugging support, including 3D visualizations presented on 2D displays, as in the popular RViz tool within the ROS ecosystem, visualizations in a two-dimensional graphical user interfaces (2D GUI), and emerging immersive three-dimensional (3D) augmented reality (AR). We present a qualitative evaluation of feedback gathered from 24 roboticists across two universities who used one of these debugging tools and synthesize design guidelines for advancing robotics debugging interfaces.