VFF: Visualization in Robotics Research, Engineering, and Education

Simulation and visualization are powerful tools for learning about, designing, and evaluating robot behavior. In fact, they are some of the most crucial tools for helping humans decipher the complex knowledge bases and decision making processes used in a robot's AI. In this talk I will describe several simulation and visualization tools being used in robotics research, development, and education. Attention will be given to Klamp't, an open source package being maintained by my lab. Klamp't has been put to the test in research projects at Duke, Stanford, University of Pisa, and Purdue, by hundreds of students in courses, as well as in "real-world" conditions during the DARPA Robotics Challenge, Amazon Picking Challenge, and IROS 2016 Robot Grasping and Manipulation Competition. In collaboration with David Zielinski and Regis Kopper, we are currently developing a Web3D interface to Klamp't which makes it easy to run complex simulations and visualizations across platforms, without installing custom software. Eventually, we hope to help students, engineers, and researchers explore and collaborate on robot behaviors by making it easy to share visualization, animation, and code.