Debug Smarter, Not Longer

Beyond rosbag replay: Fixing the ROS 2 bottleneck with Heex Smart-Data for faster troubleshooting

Traditional ROS2 debugging doesn't scale

Every ROS 2 engineer knows the struggle, replaying huge rosbags, syncing timestamps, and manually isolating anomalies. Despite faster machines and new scripts, debugging still depends on slow, tedious replays. As robotics systems grow more complex and distributed, these workflows no longer scale. Traditional approaches and tools force teams to search through entire runs instead of finding and extracting what they need, fast. The next leap in ROS 2 development isn’t a faster replay, it’s a shift from manual event hunting to a new, more efficient approach.

The Replay bottleneck

Platforms like Foxglove and others, improved visualization and data search efficiency, but remain constrained by time-based replay logic, where analyzing hours of data is still a complex and expensive process. Workarounds like partial replays, topic filters, or faster indexing can introduce desynchronization, distort event timing, and ultimately compromise scenario fidelity. Moreover, these approaches still rely on expert knowledge to identify data of interest, especially when correlating data across multiple dimensions, leaving teams with high cognitive loads and limited contextual understanding.

A new approach emerges: event-based automated data extraction

Heex introduces a Smart-Data platform that integrates natively with ROS 2, replacing traditional replay workflows with scenario-based data identification and extraction as events with contextual, rich recordings. Instead of processing terabytes of data, developers define multi-condition triggers that correlate data across topics and variables to generate events of interest and extract synchronized, context-rich data.

This fundamental change is delivered by three core capabilities:

• Complex, multi-condition scenarios, called triggers, which go beyond simple thresholds to connect multiple signals and timing conditions for deeper diagnostic precision.
• Over-the-Air (OTA) deployment enables remote updates of scenario logic across fleets without any physical access.
• Minute-scale data scanning transforms long-duration playback into near-instant queries for rapid root cause identification and troubleshooting.

These capabilities collectively transform the very nature of data accessibility. Teams now work with a few 100 MB event files—each capturing a concise, 10-second scenario—instead of navigating 1 TB of multi-hour recordings. This targeted approach simplifies storage, sharing, and analysis.

Moreover, system understanding becomes truly accessible across teams. When a robot exhibits issues like delayed braking, Heex automatically captures the relevant data through multi-topic triggers. For example, if the distance to an obstacle falls below 1m while the brake command is delayed over 200ms, the system creates a compact 150MB event file containing precisely the 10-second context needed for analysis. Engineers get synchronized event details for debugging, while QA receives immediate summaries like "Late braking: occurred at 03:42:10, distance 0.72m, delay 230ms." This eliminates the need for deep ROS expertise, enabling all stakeholders to interpret results and contribute effectively.

Event-driven debugging for scalable ROS 2 development

Traditional ROS 2 debugging relies on replaying massive rosbags, slowing root-cause analysis and limiting visibility to experts. An event-driven model replaces this with automated insight generation, correlating data across topics to pinpoint issues in minutes while maintaining synchronization and scenario fidelity. Heex delivers this through multi-condition triggers, Over-the-Air deployment, and minute-scale data scanning, providing synchronized event context accessible to engineers, project managers, and QA teams. This unified approach accelerates debugging, enhances collaboration, and scales efficiently across complex ROS 2 systems.

See ROS 2 triggers in action: Watch the webinar