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VR Robotics Tools

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Brad Saund edited this page Apr 24, 2020 · 3 revisions

This page lists and discusses other tools relevant for VR robotics

ROS Reality

ROS Reality is a system out of the Tellex lab at Brown that accomplishes the same goal as this package: Teleoperate a robot by connecting ROS to Unity. They have produced similar demos. You may want to look into ROS Reality as an alternative to my package. I wrote this current package after I had difficulties using ROS Reality.

The main difference is that I use ROS# to communicate between ROS and Unity, where ROS Reality uses a custom back end written before ROS# was available.

A main benefit of ROS-Reality is that data is passed over the internet rather than through the ROS stack, thus trivially allowing remote teleoperation once ROS-Reality is set up. (This is my understanding, but I have not tested). My system requires communication over the ROS network, which is not always easy to create across firewalls.

I find that compared to ROS Reality, my package allows much faster and larger bandwidth communication. I am able to send more visual data and have less lag in the responsiveness of the robot. This is crucial improving the quality of teleoperation. Personally, I find that the tasks I am able to perform with my setup require more dexterity and I can perform similar tasks (such as cup stacking) much faster.

ROS#

ROS# is a package written by Martin Bischoff at Siemens. My package builds on ROS#. If you are simply looking for a way to communicate between ROS and Unity, I recommend ROS#. You do not need to use my full package.

I have built some basic framework on top of robotics that I think is generally applicable to robotics.

  • Robot setup: As you likely have a completely different robot than me, you will need to import your own robot description. However, you can use my robot as a template
  • Kinect Visualization: I implement the necessary messages and shader to efficiently visualize a 3D point cloud from the kinect
  • IK Control: While there is nothing that novel in the IK control here, there are a number of "tricks of the trade" that I hope you can use on your robot
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