Key to improving the vehicle's performance is understanding what it is doing, so we have developed utilities to display and visualize the vehicle state. The shared memory editor (shm-editor for short) lets us see and edit the vehicles entire shared state in real-time using a graphical interface. Shared memory plotters also let us see the data in real-time and in a visual manner appropriate for the data being displayed. Finally, our position tracker lets us view the position history of the vehicle based on on-board sensors.

Shared Memory Editor

The Shared Memory Editor running, letting us view and edit the values in our shared memory.

Shared Memory Plotter

The shared memory plotter being used to tune the PID values of the heading controller. The dashed line shows the target heading, while the solid line shows the actual heading. This plotting enables us to see the affects of our changes in real-time and as well as to better judge the system response to various changes in desired values.

The Shared Memory Plotter can also display data in 3D. Here it is showing results from a lake test where we collected temperature data (represented as color) while driving in Cayuga Lake. The display is interactive.

The Shared Memory plotter can also display angular data in a radial output mode to help us better visualize heading data.

Position Tracker

The position tracker being used to diagnose difficulties in a mission task to approach a point. The red triangle indicates current position and heading of the vehicle while the black line shows its position history.