An Open and Reconfigurable User Interface to Manage Complex ROS-Based Robotic Systems

Abstract

The Robot Operating System (ROS) has significantly gained popularity among robotic engineers and researchers over the past five years, primarily due to its powerful infrastructure for node communication, which enables developers to build modular and large robotic applications. However, ROS presents a steep learning curve and lacks the intuitive usability of vendor-specific robotic Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). Moreover, its modular and distributed nature complicates the control and monitoring of extensive systems, even for advanced users. To address these challenges, this paper introduces a novel, highly adaptable and reconfigurable web-based GUI for intuitively controlling, monitoring, and configuring complex ROS-based robotic systems. The GUI leverages ROSBridge and roslibjs to ensure seamless communication with ROS systems via topics and services. Special attention has been paid to enable the easy reconfiguration of the GUI and to minimize the modifications required to integrate it with new robotic systems. Thus, it has been designed as a versatile platform, which allows for the selective incorporation of modular features to accommodate diverse robotic systems and applications. A predefined template has been defined to ensure the compatibility of the developed features with the GUI platform. Additionally, an initial set of commonly used features in robotic applications is presented. To demonstrate its reconfigurability, the GUI was customized and tested for four industrial use cases, receiving positive feedback. The project’s repository has been made publicly available to support the robotics community and lower the entry barrier for ROS in industrial applications.