On a typical day in San Francisco, Cruise’s autonomous vehicles (AVs) make countless decisions per second. These decisions are based on data collected by cameras, microphones, radar, and LIDAR sensors. The vehicles store this data in binary format for later analysis. Cruise’s software and test engineers then explore the data, using insights gained to enhance the safety and performance of the autonomous fleet.
Webviz Layouts: A Modular Approach
Users can create custom Webviz layouts by selecting, arranging, and configuring panels. For example, the layout may include 3D panels, a plot panel, and more. The data sources that power the visuals in Webviz offer a dynamic view into the robotics data Cruise generates.
Why Webviz Was Created
Initially, Cruise engineers relied on tools from the ROS (Robot Operating System) community to visualize AV data. These tools, while effective, required a complex setup involving multiple windows, each dedicated to a different function, such as reading log messages or viewing camera images. Customizing workflows was possible but replicating these setups across different machines was time-consuming.
To streamline the process, a team at Cruise combined various open-source tools into a single web-based application. This prototype, named Webviz, offered a more cohesive and modular approach to data visualization. Engineers could now easily customize layouts and share them across teams, significantly lowering the barrier to entry for exploring AV data.
How Webviz Accelerated Progress at Cruise
What started as a hackathon project soon became a crucial tool in Cruise’s development pipeline. By simplifying how AV data is visualized and interpreted, Webviz has accelerated Cruise’s mission of building the world’s most advanced self-driving vehicles. Its customizable layout system allows engineers to better understand how AVs interpret their environment, leading to more informed decisions on improving the technology.
Building Webviz: A Flexible and Customizable Tool
At its core, Webviz allows users to create various panel layouts, with each panel functioning as a data exploration tool. These tools include 2D charts, 3D visualizations, and logs. Initially, Webviz integrated existing open-source tools like rviz, rqt_console, and rostopic echo. Over time, Cruise developed custom panels tailored to the company’s specific needs.
Despite these customizations, Webviz remains useful for the broader open-source robotics community. Its flexibility allows users to configure, extend, and customize panels for a wide range of workflows.
Current Use of Webviz at Cruise
Today, Webviz supports nearly a thousand monthly active users across various Cruise teams. From engineers calibrating LIDAR sensors to machine learning specialists verifying model outputs, Webviz has become an essential tool. Its modular and flexible interface allows any team at Cruise to contribute to the platform by creating custom panels tailored to their specific needs.See more here clubneet.
Teams can also save and share layouts, making it easier to collaborate and streamline workflows. Cruise has even integrated other internal tools into Webviz, allowing engineers to watch simulations or stream data directly from the internal data lake.
Open Source Contributions and Future Plans
Earlier this year, Cruise open-sourced Worldview, a 3D visualization library created to translate the complex data captured by AVs into intuitive visualizations. Cruise also developed and open-sourced rosbag.js, a JavaScript library for reading ROS bag files. Both projects were crucial in developing Webviz.
Webviz’s benefits extend beyond Cruise, leading to its open-source release as a general-purpose robotics data visualization tool. With its suite of general panels, robotics developers can explore their own data with minimal setup. Cruise hopes the robotics community will find value in Webviz for their data exploration needs.
What’s Next for Webviz?
playsamay4 / webviz is a web application that lets users configure different layouts of panels.Cruise plans to continue enhancing Webviz, adding more panels and developing a public API to allow developers to create custom panels. The goal is to empower the robotics community with better tools for data visualization and exploration. As Cruise continues to benefit from open-source contributions, the company aims to give back by helping others develop the next generation of robotic technologies.
To see Webviz in action, visit the live demo or drag your own ROS bag files into Webviz for an immediate visual insight into your robotics data.
