robots

How to set up Robots!?

In this page, we will explore how robots can be integrated to OmniLRS.

!Note Isaac provides many ways to import, create, or modify existing robots. This can be done through a URDF importer, a mujoco importer, or an Onshape importet. Robots can also be rigged manually from within the UI. We encourage anyone non-familiar with Isaac Sim to take a look at Isaac's Sim comprehensive suite of tutorials for ROS/ROS2.

Robots and where to find them

By default, we provide two robots to be used in the simulation. These are generic non-space robots. The reasoning behind that is that Space hardware is so unique that end-users would either use generic off-the-shelf robots or highly specialized ones. Hence we settled with two popular options from ClearPath Robotics (the Husky and the Jackal), which we fitted with a basic suite of sensors.

Available robots & sensor payloads:

• Husky:
  • Velodyne VLP16: ros2_husky_PhysX_vlp16.usd
  • Velodyne VLP16 + RGB + Depth + IMU: ros2_husky_PhysX_vlp16_mono_depth_imu.usd
• Jackal:
  • Velodyne VLP16: ros2_jackal_PhysX_vlp16.usd
  • Velodyne VLP16 + RGB Left + RGB Right + IMU: ros2_jackal_PhysX_vlp16_stereo.usd

Caution

These robots are ROS2 capable only. Their omnigraphs are setup for ROS2. This makes them compatible with SpaceROS.

Note

This list will grow in the coming month as we try more robots onto it. We are planning on adding Leo Rovers and Quadrupeds in the near future.

Changing the default robot used when starting an environment

To change the default robot used when starting an environment, you need to edit the robot_settings inside the environment config. The robot_settings who defines the set of parameters managing robots provides the following set of parameters.

Arguments:

• uses_nucleus: (str), whether or not the robot loader should try to find the robot on Omniverse Nucleus cloud. True means the robot is on nucleus. False the robot is local.
• is_ROS2: (bool), if the robot is ROS2 enabled. True if the robot is using ROS2.
• max_robots: (int), The maximum amount of robots in the scene.
• robots_root: (str), The path where the robots are generated in the scene.
• parameters: (list(RobotsParameters)), A list of parameters defining robots.

Important

Large scale environments only support one robot at a time. This is due to the type of algorithms used to render the terrain.

To define a robot one can use the following arguments:

• robot_name: (str), the name of the robot. It's mostly used to teleport it or reset it.
• usd_path: (str), the path of the robot on nucleus or locally.
• pose:
  • position: (float,float,float) x, y, z position.
  • orientation: (float,float,float) w, x, y, z quaternion.
• domain_id: int, The domain id of the robot. (not functional)
• target_links: (list(str)) The links used to compute the deformation forces when derforming terrains.

Important

For the large scale environments the position and orientation of the robot is ignored and the starting_position parameter is used instead. The Z position of the robot is computed automatically.

Example:

robots_settings:
  uses_nucleus: False
  is_ROS2: True
  max_robots: 5
  robots_root: "/Robots"
  parameters:
      -
      robot_name: husky
      usd_path: assets/USD_Assets/robots/ros2_husky_PhysX_vlp16.usd
      pose:
        position: [5.0, 5.0, 0.5]
        orientation: [1, 0, 0, 0]
      domain_id: 0
      target_links: ["front_left_wheel_link", "front_right_wheel_link", "rear_left_wheel_link", "rear_right_wheel_link"]