Applications of Visualization Technology in Robotics Software Development

Control software for experimental autonomous robots is typically complex and subject to frequent changes – posing numerous challenges for software engineers. When based on general-purpose robotics frameworks, significant parts of such systems are modular and data-flow-oriented – a natural fit for visualization in graph structures. In this paper, we present approaches to visualize different aspects of robotics software which proved helpful or even essential in our development process. Furthermore, we briefly introduce central abstractions in our software framework which greatly facilitate generic solutions.