Augmented-Reality-Based Visualization of Navigation Data of Mobile Robots on the Microsoft Hololens -- Possibilities and Limitations

Abstract: The demand for mobile robots has rapidly increased in recent years due to the flexibility and high variety of application fields comparing to static robots. To deal with complex tasks such as navigation, they work with high amounts of different sensor data making it difficult to operate with for non-experts. To enhance user understanding and human robot interaction, we propose an approach to visualize the navigation stack within a cutting edge 3D Augmented Reality device -- the Microsoft Hololens. Therefore, relevant navigation stack data including laser scan, environment map and path planing data are visualized in 3D within the head mounted device. Based on that prototype, we evaluate the Hololens in terms of computational capabilities and limitations for dealing with huge amount of real-time data. Results show that the Hololens is capable of a proper visualization of huge amounts of sensor data. We demonstrate a proper visualization of navigation stack data in 3D within the Hololens. However, there are limitations when transferring and displaying different kinds of data simultaneously.