Interactive Robot Viewer

Torque-controlled robots pose new challenges for robot visualization software. These robots open up new areas of application, especially for direct human robot interaction. At the same time considerably more measured parameters are to be displayed. The SeRo-Viewer, developed in the Telepresence and VR Lab, is a software tool for visualizing such advanced robotic systems. It is based on the InstantPlayer of the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD.

This robot viewer focuses on three key aspects:

ease of use (clickable visual features),
easy to implement (only couple of lines needed to code),
and generic (arbitrary UDP and shared memory packages).

The SeRo-Viewer is a useful tool for robot developers, programmers and users, since it provides an intuitive view on the robot's parameters and movements. It contributes to a higher efficiency of robot simulations, and thereby enables to diminish hardware stress.

Selected Publications

T. Hulin, K. Hertkorn, C. Preusche: Interactive Features for Robot Viewers, ICIRA 2012, Oct. 2012, Montreal, Quebec, Canada


Rollin' Justin visualized by the SeRo-Viewer


HUG visualized by the SeRo-Viewer


Light Weight Robot LWR visualized by the SeRo-Viewer


Exemplary code for visualizing the LWR with the SeRo-Viewer


Justin visualized by the SeRo-Viewer


Arrows with label show qualitatively and quantitatively measured or commanded forces and torques


Labeled Coordinate Axes are very useful for complex robotic systems in which some axes have the same position but different orientations


Numerical displays show different joint parameters


Rotating arrows indicate torque differences between measured and commanded torques


A transparent robot double illustrates the target poses of a motion interpolator

Contact

Dr.-Ing. Thomas Hulin
German Aerospace Center
Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics, Analysis and Control of advanced robotic systems
Oberpfaffenhofen-Weßling
Tel.: +49 8153 28-1306
Fax: +49 8153 28-1134