Dreamview Usage Table

Dreamview is a web application that,

1. visualizes the current output of relevant autonomous driving modules, e.g. planning trajectory, car localization, chassis status, etc.

2. provides human-machine interface for users to view hardware status, turn on/off of modules, and start the autonomous driving car.

3. provides debugging tools, such as PnC Monitor to efficiently track module issues.

Layout and Features

The application layout is divided into several regions: header, sidebar, main view, and tool view.

Header

The Header has 3 drop-downs that can be set as shown:

The Co-Driver switch is used to detect disengagement event automatically. Once detected, Dreamview will display a pop-up of the data recorder window for the co-driver to enter a new drive event.

Depending on the mode chosen from the mode selector, the corresponding modules and commands, defined in hmi.conf, will be presented in the Module Controller, and Quick Start, respectively.

Note: navigation mode is for the purpose of the low-cost feature introduced in Apollo 2.5. Under this mode, Baidu (or Google) Map presents the absolute position of the ego-vehicle, while the main view has all objects and map elements presented in relative positions to the ego-vehicle.

Sidebar and Tool View

Sidebar panel controls what is displayed in the tool view described below:

Tasks

All the tasks that you could perform in DreamView:

• Quick Start: commands supported from the selected mode. In general, setup: turns on all modules

  reset all: turns off all modules

  start auto: starts driving the vehicle autonomously

• Others: switches and buttons for tools used frequently

• Module Delay: the time delay between two messages for each topic

• Console: monitor messages from the Apollo platform

Module Controller

A panel to view the hardware status and turn the modules on/off

Layer Menu

A toggle menu for visual elements displays.

Route Editing

A visual tool to plan a route before sending the routing request to the Routing module

Data Recorder

A panel to report issues to drive event topic (“/apollo/drive_event”) to rosbag.

Default Routing

List of predefined routes or single points, known as point of interest (POI).

If route editing is on, routing point(s) can be added visually on the map.

If route editing is off, clicking a desired POI will send a routing request to the server. If the selected POI contains only a point, the start point of the routing request is the current position of the autonomous car; otherwise, the start position is the first point from the desired route.

To edit POIs, see default_end_way_point.txt file under the directory of the Map. For example, if the map selected from the map selector is “Demo”, then default_end_way_point.txt is located under modules/map/data/demo.

Main view:

Main view animated 3D computer graphics in a web browser.

Elements in the main view are listed in the table below:

Visual Element	Depiction Explanation
	The autonomous car
	The wheel steering percentage. The status of left/right turn signals (In an emergency situation, both signals will be on.)
	The traffic signal detected
	The driving mode (AUTO/DISENGAGED/MANUAL/etc.)
	The driving speed in km/h as default. Click on the unit to change the unit. The accelerator/brake percentage
	The red thick line shows the routing suggestion
	Nudge object decision – the orange zone indicates the area to avoid
	The green thick curvy band indicates the planned trajectory

Obstacles

Visual Element	Depiction Explanation
	Vehicle obstacle
	Pedestrian obstacle
	Bicycle obstacle
	Unknown obstacle
	The velocity arrow shows the direction of the movement with the length proportional to the magnitude
	The white arrow shows the directional heading of the obstacle
	The yellow text indicates: The tracking ID of the obstacle. The distance from the autonomous car and obstacle speed.
	The lines show the predicted movement of the obstacle with the same color as the obstacle

Planning Decision

Decision Fence

Decision fences reflect decisions made by planning module to ego-vehicle (main) and obstacles (objects). Each type of decision is presented in different color and icon as shown below:

Visual Element	Depiction Explanation
	Stop depicting the primary stopping reason
	Stop depicting the object stopping reason
	Follow object
	Yield object decision – the dotted line connects with the respective object
	Overtake object decision – the dotted line connects with the respective object

Changing lane is a special decision and hence, instead of having decision fence, a change lane icon shows on the autonomous car:

Visual Element	Depiction Explanation
	Change to Left lane
	Change to Right lane

When a yield decision is made based on the “Right of Way” laws at a stop-sign intersection, the obstacles to be yielded will have the yield icon on top:

Visual Element	Depiction Explanation
	Obstacle to yield at stop sign

Stop reasons

When a STOP decision fence is shown, the reason to stop is displayed on the right side of the stop icon. Possible reasons and the corresponding icons are:

Visual Element	Depiction Explanation
	Clear-zone in front
	Crosswalk in front
	Destination arrival
	Emergency
	Auto mode is not ready
	Obstacle is blocking the route
	Pedestrian crossing in front
	Traffic light is yellow/red
	Vehicle in front
	Stop sign in front
	Pull over
	Yield sign in front

Point of View

Main view that reflects the point of view chosen from Layer Menu:

Visual Element	Point of View
	Default
	Near
	Overhead
	Map To zoom in/out: mouse scroll or pinch with two fingers To move around:right-click and drag or swipe with three fingers

Shortcut Keys

Shortcut Keys	Description
1	Toggle Task panel
2	Toggle Module Controller panel
3	Toggle Layer Menu panel
4	Toggle Route Editing panel
5	Toggle Data Recorder panel
6	Toggle Audio Capture panel
7	Toggle Default Routing panel
v	Rotate Point of View options

PnC Monitor

To view the monitor:

1. Build Apollo and run Dreamview on your web browser

2. Turn on the “PNC Monitor” from the ‘Others’ panel.

3. On the right-hand side, you should be able to view the Planning, Control, Latency graphs as seen below

Planning/Control Graphs

The Planning/Control tab from the monitor plots various graphs to reflect the internal states of its modules.

Customizable Graphs for Planning Module

planning_internal.proto is a protobuf that stores debugging information, which is processed by dreamview server and send to dreamview client to help engineers debug. For users who want to plot their own graphs for new planning algorithms:

1. Fill in the information of your “chart” defined in planning_internal.proto.

2. X/Y axis: chart.proto has “Options” that you could set for axis which include

   • min/max: minimum/maximum number for the scale

   • label_string: axis label

   • legend_display: to show or hide a chart legend.

3. Dataset:

   • Type: each graph can have multiple lines, polygons, and/or car markers defined in chart.proto:

     • Line:

       

     • Polygon:

       

     • Car:

       

   • Label: each dataset must have a unique “Label” to each chart in order to help dreamview identify which dataset to update.

   • Properties: for polygon and line, you can set styles. Dreamview uses Chartjs.org for graphs. Below are common ones:

     Name	Description	Example
     color	The line color	rgba(27, 249, 105, 0.5)
     borderWidth	The line width	2
     pointRadius	The radius of the point shape	1
     fill	Whether to fill the area under the line	false
     showLine	Whether to draw the line	true

   Refer to https://www.chartjs.org/docs/latest/charts/line.html for more properties.

4. Sample: You could look into on_lane_planning.cc for a code sample.

Additional Planning Paths

For users who want to render additional paths on dreamview 3D scene, add the desired paths to the “path” field in planning_internal.proto. These paths will be rendered when PnC Monitor is on:

Dreamview has predefined styles for the first four paths:

Properties	Path 1	Path 2	Path 3	Path 4
width	0.8	0.15	0.4	0.65
color	0x01D1C1	0x36A2EB	0x8DFCB4	0xD85656
opacity	0.65	1	0.7	0.8
zOffset	4	7	6	5

If you have more than four paths to render or want to change the styles, edit the planning.pathProperties value in dreamview/frtonend/dist/parameters.json .

Latency graph

The graph displays the difference in time when the module receives sensor input data to when it will publish this data.

The Latency Graph can be used to track the latency each individual faces. The graphs are coloured differently to help distinguish the modules and a key is included for better understanding. The graph is plotted as Latency measured in ms vs Timestamp measure in seconds as seen in the image below.