Science

Vizanti – web visualizer and mission planner for ROS robots

Vizanti is a browser-based visualization and mission-planning interface for robots using ROS. It is intended particularly for outdoor robots where operators may need to walk alongside a machine and control it from a phone or tablet rather than remain at a workstation. The interface takes inspiration from the orthographic 2D workflow of RViz while putting greater emphasis on touch-friendly control and mission execution.

Vizanti is normally hosted on the robot itself and accessed over the local network, which allows core operation to continue without an Internet connection. The project combines a web interface with ROS bridge services and stores client-side settings in the browser. This makes it suitable both for monitoring a robot during field work and for directly issuing movement, navigation and operational commands.

This is free and open source software.

Key Features

  • Plans and sends navigation goals and waypoint missions.
  • Generates survey paths as grid patterns inside user-defined polygons.
  • Provides a touch-friendly teleoperation joystick for sending velocity commands.
  • Displays occupancy grids, grid cells and satellite map tiles.
  • Caches satellite imagery locally for offline field use.
  • Visualizes TF transforms and robot poses.
  • Displays point clouds, laser scans, compressed images and marker arrays.
  • Provides battery, speedometer, altimeter and attitude widgets.
  • Includes a topic inspector for viewing raw ROS messages.
  • Offers diagnostics monitoring for diagnostic and logging topics.
  • Can start and stop robot nodes from the web interface.
  • Provides controls for viewing and editing parameters.
  • Can record ROS bags from the interface.
  • Supports custom buttons for sending or toggling common message types.
  • Groups related widgets into folders and saves interface settings locally.

Website: github.com/MoffKalast/vizanti
Support:
Developer: MoffKalast
License: BSD 3-Clause “New” or “Revised” License

Vizanti is written primarily in JavaScript, with Python used for its server-side ROS integration. Learn JavaScript with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.


Related Software

Robotics Software
NASA Vision WorkbenchImage processing in the context of machine vision
DARTDynamic Animation and Robotics Toolkit
Gazebo SimRobot simulation made easy
AprilTagVisual fiducial system popular for robotics research
WebotsMulti-platform desktop application used to simulate robots
ROSSoftware framework for building robot applications
ARGoSPhysics-based simulator designed to simulate robot swarms
MoveItRobotic manipulation platform for ROS 2
OpenRTM-aistComponent-oriented development of robot systems
The Player ProjectCross-platform robot device interface & server
UrbiUniversal Robot Body Interface

Read our verdict in the software roundup.


Best Free and Open Source Software Explore our carefully curated directory of recommended free and open source software, covering every major software category.

The directory forms part of our extensive collection of articles for Linux enthusiasts. It includes hundreds of detailed reviews, together with free and open source alternatives to proprietary software from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk.

LinuxLinks also covers interesting projects worth exploring, Linux-compatible hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more.

Know a useful free and open source Linux application that we haven’t covered? Tell us about it using our submission form.
Subscribe

Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.

Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted