The View tab gives a visual display of the main sensors as well as the current battery condition.

The View tab as it appears in Windows

The View tab as it appears in Mac OS X

The Sensor Window

The sensor window shows what the robot "sees" with the sensors when in operation.  The two rectangles near the front of the robot show the state of the downward-looking IR proximity detectors.  They will be green if the robot sees a surface beneath it.  They will turn red if the robot sees nothing beneath it.  The small box between the two downward-looking IR sensors indicates the state of the button on the back of Garcia's head.  It will be black when pushed.  Otherwise it will be light gray.  Six moving bars show the readings for the front, side, and rear pairs of IR range finders.

The distances returned by the IR range finders are corrected to be linear and scaled to the size of the robot in the sensor window.  This is exactly how the Garcia API returns range finder information.  All the measurements are relative to the small origin at the center of the Garcia robot's spin axis.  This allows you to do math with the API return values as though Garcia was a point source.

Notice how the range finder indicators change as you move your hands in front of the sensors on the front, sides, and back of Garcia.  These sensors are typically only turned on when the robot is moving in the direction the sensor is oriented in.  For this tool, the sensors are just all turned on and left on.

The Battery Indicator

The Battery Indicator shows both the amount left in the battery capacity (like a gas guage) as well as the actual voltage of the batteries.  This tool, like the Garcia API, scales the voltage to amount of remaining capacity based on a non-linear curve.  You can query the Garcia API for either the raw voltage or the computed and normalized capacity remaining.

If the battery voltage is below the minimum, the guage will show empty and the robot should be charged immediately.  The guage turns red when 10% capacity is remaining indicating that a charge is needed soon.

The User LED Button

This check box allows you to turn the yellow LED in Garcia's head on and off.  This user-controlled LED may be used as a status signal in an application.