Improve tasks UI #345

xiyuoh · 2025-07-23T12:39:07Z

This PR targets #312 to bring in the following improvements to the task UI:

Add fleet param to Robot
Move Fleet field into More for dispatch tasks, and remove redundant Fleet name for all task requests
Moved tasks to toggle-able left panel, accessible through the top menu bar (new button next to Browse Fuel)
Creating new tasks happen in a separate window that appears in the center of the screen
In-place editing for existing tasks, with the exception of task kind description due to the need to access world
Optional serialization for tasks and other modifier fields
[EDIT]: Resolve More details button flicker

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

xiyuoh · 2025-07-29T07:24:38Z

After a little bit of poking around, it turns out that the UI flicker when clicking on the More details button was caused by having egui::Grid embedded inside a CollapsingHeader. Removing it fixes the issue. The grid was added to provide some alignment, but I think it's not worth having the entire UI glitching.

Another remaining bug is the the one-frame delay when toggling the Start time / Request time / Priority checkboxes. but I think they will be resolved with #325 where we handle UpdateModifierEvent with observers.

mxgrey · 2025-08-11T12:25:40Z

It might be good for @Nielsencu to take a look at this and think about how to align these changes with some of the things we've discussed for the debugging tool. One similarity is that tasks have been moved to a toggleable panel on the left, similar to what we've discussed for the debugging tool.

xiyuoh · 2025-08-25T06:34:01Z

While fixing merge conflicts from main, I found a small missing piece that should've been added in #325. Without this, any scenario elements with Inclusion property wouldn't have the corresponding modifier inserted automatically. We currently don't face this issue with model instances as the modifiers are manually inserted in the model loading workflow.

Pointing this out in case this PR gets closed in favor of a separate PR for the debugging tool - if that's the case I'll open a separate one for this particular fix.

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Nielsencu · 2025-08-26T09:06:37Z

I was thinking if it would make sense to combine both the tasks panel and debugger panel into one? The left panel would be divided vertically into two, where the tasks section would sit above the MAPF debugger section. I am not sure there are other functionalities for tasks at the moment, as far as I know they are only used for debugging MAPF. Given my understanding is correct, I think it makes sense to put them into one panel. We can even have a checkbox that toggles on and off the MAPF debugger section, if users only want to add tasks but do not want the debugger functionality (though I currently do not see the use case of only adding tasks without debugger).

xiyuoh · 2025-08-26T15:49:21Z

@Nielsencu Shifting both tasks and debugger into the left panel sounds good to me! Tasks serve to represent and store different types of activities a robot is capable of carrying out, and we'll likely plan for more types of tasks beyond GoToPlace (which is what you're using for the mapf debugger). Being able to toggle the debugger section on/off is a great idea.

luca-della-vedova

I gave this a spin and found a few issues:

Location for GoToPlace and Duration for WaitFor tasks are in the wrong UI block when doing inplace edits, specifically they don't seem to be contained in the task itself but in the root left side panel

and

It seems that changing a task type can reorder it in the list of tasks, for example starting from the state above, if I change Task 1081 from WaitFor to GoToPlace it gets automatically moved to the top of the list. For this I would suggest having a static sorting strategy, perhaps in alphabetical order of the task name?

I also noticed that GoToPlace tasks without a set location can still be added (both before and after this PR), is this intentional? Since a GoToPlace without a destination is invalid I feel the Add task button should be greyed out if it's not set.

luca-della-vedova · 2025-08-29T03:08:57Z

assets/demo_maps/test.site.json

  },
  "robots": {
    "52": {
+      "fleet": "HospitalRobot",


Should we add tasks to this file so we make it part of our CI pipeline? It can be done in a followup if you prefer

luca-della-vedova · 2025-08-29T03:24:18Z

crates/rmf_site_editor/src/widgets/tasks/mod.rs

        Color32::default()
    };
-    let mut edit = false;
+    let in_edit_mode = edit_task.0.is_some_and(|e| e == task_entity);


It's not exactly here (a few lines below) but I'm a bit conflicted on using the task's Entity value for its display name, has there been a thought on having a NameInSite component for tasks? We could auto-generate it with a random ID the way we do in the RMF stack. Or if we want to go for IDs maybe just the SiteID? Entity values can be pretty random, I noticed that creating a new task in my test (screenshots in main review comment) created Task 1078, and creating a new one immediately after resulted in Task 1081, I would argue the very high + not even contiguous number is not too informative.

Nielsencu · 2025-08-30T08:18:06Z

Just a few suggestions that I thought can be made as I was working with tasks

Instead of saving the robot location as a string (I belive it's inserted in the description), I think it would be better if we can also access the location Entity independently as part of the task
Similar to 1, currently robot assigned is saved as a string. Useful to save it as an entity instead
When hovering the Select location:, it would be helpful to highlight the currently selected location on the map, because it can be confusing to find where is this location in the map for first-time users
Add is_valid() to also account for robot location for direct tasks. Since a direct task without valid location means its not a valid task

Reasons for 1 and 2 is for easy-lookup. Currently, I have to iterate through all possible locations, match the string, and get the relevant location entity to find the anchor transform.

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

xiyuoh · 2025-09-04T03:26:06Z

@luca-della-vedova @Nielsencu Thanks both for the detailed review and suggestions! I believe I managed to address all of them:

TaskKind widgets (GoToPlace, WaitFor UI) no longer below the task list, but within the same task widget where edits are being made (f129a4a)
Order of tasks could be changed if edits were made - this was initially set as a future TODO to incorporate sorting based on start_time and request_time, but I just added in a simple implementation this time. (a2390aa) The tasks are now sorted as such:
- If the task has a non-empty start_time, we'll use it for sorting.
- If the task does not have a start_time, but has a non-empty request_time, we'll use the request_time for sorting.
- If the task does not have start_time or request_time, we'll use its created_time for sorting. created_time is newly added and will just be the time at which the Task was first created (when Create New Task button is pressed).
- Should not happen BUT if somehow a created_time was not successfully calculated and added to the Task upon creation, then the task will be pushed to the end of the queue and sorted by entity index.
TaskKind validity - GoToPlace now requires a valid location for the task to be added to the list. Along with this we can now define a IsTaskValidFn for each TaskKind. (c23dffa)
Use Entity to identify Robots and Locations in tasks instead of String names (8c278e2, f67cc3b)
Highlight Robots and Locations when they are hovered over during task creation (4946083)
Use timestamp as task identifier instead of Entity index (ec9443d)
Added sample tasks to test.site.json for CI

Other add-ons:

Applied alphabetical sorting for Locations when configuring GoToPlace, and Robots for Direct tasks.
Fix task saving/loading - the previous implementation was able to save tasks but not load them. All the fields in TaskParams were also set to skip_if_default, but we should really save all of them to avoid confusion between empty modifiers and no modifiers. Done in ec9443d and 3c43a73

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

xiyuoh · 2025-09-05T16:26:43Z

CI failing, should be fixed by #385. Opened as a separate PR since it is not related to tasks specifically.

luca-della-vedova · 2025-09-09T05:30:17Z

crates/rmf_site_editor/src/widgets/tasks/mod.rs

+                    ui.label("Fleet:").on_hover_text(
+                        "(Optional) The name of the fleet for this robot. \
+                            If specified, other fleets will not bid for this task.",
+                    );
+                    if !in_edit_mode {
+                        ui.label(task_request.fleet_name().unwrap_or("None".to_string()));
+                    } else {
+                        edit_fleet_widget(ui, &mut new_task);
+                    }


I noticed that on my machine "some" tooltips don't work, specifically Fleet doesn't but Requester does, can you reproduce?
I also wonder since we are pre-populating the fleet, do we actually want the fleet parameter to be editable or should it just be fixed?
Making it editable creates a risk of disconnect, for example TinyRobot1 is spawned in the world as part of Fleet1, users decide to assign a direct task to it and choose it from the dropdown, the fleet is automatically initialized to Fleet1, which is great.
However, the field is editable so users can change the fleet name to Fleet2 and still create a valid task but it seems to me that is an invalid task that should not be allowed.
What do you think?

Yeah I think you're right, it was quite an inconsistent design. I'll make this non-editable.
7de9d83

I noticed that on my machine "some" tooltips don't work, specifically Fleet doesn't but Requester does, can you reproduce?

That's weird, on my end I'm able to see all the tooltips

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

xiyuoh added 7 commits July 15, 2025 13:43

Reorg fleet name param

ac3333c

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

In-place task edit

7daa517

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Move Create New Task to center window

c4f8099

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Move task panel to the left

3989422

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Children widget in dialog if create new task

0a97f7a

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Optional serializing for some items

a4fb9c3

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Infer fleet from robot

dfd30f6

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

mxgrey added this to PMC Board Jul 23, 2025

github-project-automation bot moved this to Inbox in PMC Board Jul 23, 2025

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into xiyu/improve_tasks

45c9a19

mxgrey moved this from Inbox to In Review in PMC Board Jul 24, 2025

Remove Grid to prevent glitch

a0f9023

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Merge branch 'main' into xiyu/improve_tasks

e45e884

Update test site

4975976

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Merge branch 'main' into xiyu/improve_tasks

c6211d4

luca-della-vedova reviewed Aug 29, 2025

View reviewed changes

xiyuoh added 8 commits September 1, 2025 06:46

Check if TaskKind is valid

c23dffa

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

In-place editing for task kind

f129a4a

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Implement time sorting for tasks

a2390aa

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Fix pending tasks TaskParams not saved

73dc9a3

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Use Point<Entity> instead of String for GoToPlace locations

8c278e2

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into xiyu/improve_tasks

be19460

Task-based visual cue for GoToPlace

4946083

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Use entities instead of name for Robot

f67cc3b

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

xiyuoh added 2 commits September 3, 2025 09:52

Use timestamp as task id and fix saving

ec9443d

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Fix saving location in tasks

3c43a73

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

xiyuoh requested a review from luca-della-vedova September 4, 2025 03:26

Insert valid task location

f79bb7d

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

xiyuoh mentioned this pull request Sep 5, 2025

Refactor RobotProperty implementation #385

Merged

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into xiyu/improve_tasks

5de4cb7

luca-della-vedova reviewed Sep 9, 2025

View reviewed changes

xiyuoh added 3 commits September 9, 2025 20:53

Do not allow editing fleet name via task widget

7de9d83

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into xiyu/improve_tasks

a92bf8a

TODO: check why negotiation loops when goal changes

dec22ac

Signed-off-by: Xiyu Oh <[email protected]>

Improve tasks UI #345

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Improve tasks UI #345

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