Visualizing the hidden variables in robot programs

Programs for one-armed industrial robots include many location-centric statements, such as Move to location AboveSurface. Unfortunately, developers struggle to understand static location variables like AboveSurface, as mapping their seven-coordinate definitions to the real world is time consuming and error prone. Thus these locations, as well as the paths between them, which constitute the heart of any robot program, are effectively invisible to the programmer. To enable effective robot programming this core data must be visualized. There are two potential approaches to visualizing it. The first, visualizing locations one by one (e.g., by automatically moving the robot to each location) is limited to one location at a time. The second, visualizing locations in virtual reality can show all locations and paths at one time, but eliminates the ability to interact with the real world, which has many drawbacks. To avoid these drawbacks we propose using high-precision mixed reality to visualize program locations and paths, all while preserving the natural interaction with the real world workspace and robot. In this paper we demonstrate the feasibility of such an approach, sketch a solution, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages.