Debugging Quadrocopter Trajectories in Mixed Reality

Debugging and monitoring robotic applications is a very intricate and error-prone task. To this end, we propose a mixed-reality approach to facilitate this process along a concrete scenario. We connected the Microsoft HoloLens smart glass to the Robot Operating System (ROS), which is used to control robots, and visualize arbitrary flight data of a quadrocopter. Hereby, we display holograms correctly in the real world based on a conversion of the internal tracking coordinates into coordinates provided by a motion capturing system. Moreover, we describe the synchronization process of the internal tracking with the motion capturing. Altogether, the combination of the HoloLens and the external tracking system shows promising preliminary results. Moreover, our approach can be extended to directly manipulate source code through its mixed-reality visualization and offers new interaction methods to debug and develop robotic applications.