IROS is one of the two conferences that define robotics research. The 2026 edition runs September 27 to October 1 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, with more than 7,000 academics, researchers, students and industry professionals expected. The Qualisys team will be present at booth #108 and excited to tell you more about Qualisys’ solutions for engineering.
What teams use it for
Ground truth validation
Record position and orientation alongside the robot’s own SLAM, VIO, LiDAR, UWB, odometry and IMU outputs, then calculate absolute position, heading, drift, latency and trajectory error. You cannot measure your own error with the sensor that produced it, so the reference has to come from outside the robot.
Live external localization
Stream real-time 6DOF position and orientation to a drone, an AMR or a research robot during development or controlled operation. Sub-10 ms latency to third-party software, native ROS resources, and open source SDKs for C++, C# and Python.
At the booth: the Laser Game
Four physical cubes sit on a table. Qualisys cameras track the markers on each one, QTM turns them into 6DOF rigid bodies, and the poses stream live into Unreal Engine 5 through QTM Connect LiveLink. In the game, each cube becomes a mirror.
A laser fires from an emitter. Angle the cubes so the beam bounces off them, routes around the walls, and lands on the green goal. Later levels add forcefields that block the beam, each one linked to a floor plate. Put a cube on the plate and the forcefield switches off.
A cube’s angle steers the beam. A cube’s position opens the door.