Unity ROS Teleoperation Project

This repo contains a series of components for Unity XR teleoperation with ROS integration. It is designed to be run on a Quest 3 VR headset, and support OpenXR, hand tracking, Unity input system, and is built with Unity 6000.2.15f1. _Newer versions of Unity no longer work on ROS 1 versions of Ubuntu, so this will be the latest offically supported version of Unity for ROS 1.

For information on setting up Unity and opening this project Unity Quickstart, and for Quest information see Quest Quickstart. To install the git-hooks, and link this project to a Linux Unity Hub, run the setup.sh script. To side load apps to the Quest see SideQuest Quickstart, and for streaming the app to a linux device see our streaming script.

Quickstart

On the ROS side, the custom TCP Endpoint needs to be run somewhere on the ROS network (For ROS 2 systems, make sure to switch to the main-ros2 branch, although the current Unity app supports both versions of ROS out of the box). This node is pretty lightweight so it can be run directly on a robot. Once the node is running the device running this app needs to connect to the ROS network, and the IP of the device running the TCP Endpoint needs to be set in the menu (see Menu for more information). If everything works, the menu should turn green, and data should be streaming between the app and ROS. For custom robots, check out the documentation on adding new robot models. If you are interested in contributing to the project, check out the contributing guidelines.

Components

Component	Description	Location	Preview
Audio Streamer	Implements bidirectional audio stream over ROS	Assets/RSL/Sensors/Audio
Camera Viewer	Renders a ROS image stream to a floating image window	Assets/RSL/Sensors/Camera
Grid Map	Renders a 2.5D grid map such as elevation maps from Anymal	Assets/RSL/Sensors/GridMap
Hands	Hand tracking and pose publishing over ROS, compatible with Ability hand models	Assets/RSL/Telemetry/Hands
Haptic	Bhaptic glove support plus controller haptics	Assets/RSL/Core/Haptics
Headset Publisher	Publishes headset and hand poses on TF and Pose	Assets/RSL/Telemetry/Headset
Lidar	GPU rendering for LiDAR and PointCloud2 point viz from ROS	Assets/RSL/Sensors/Lidar
Markers	Displays various ROS markers in the scene (supports points, cubes, spheres)	Assets/RSL/Sensors/Markers
Menu	Palm menu for interaction and toggling	Assets/RSL/Core/Menu
NeRFViewer	Handheld viewer for rendering NeRFs and scene interaction	Assets/RSL/Sensors/NeRF
PathStreamer	Displays nav paths with a line and series of arrows	Assets/RSL/Sensors/Path
PosePublisher	Publishes poses and Joystick commands for locomotion	Assets/RSL/Telemetry/Pose
PoseStreamer	Displays stamped poses	Assets/RSL/Sensors/Pose
Robots	Robot model manager, holds the meshes, materials and the scripts to swap between Anymal, ALMA, Tytan, Standalone Dynaarm and Franka Panda	Assets/RSL/Core/Robots
Service Caller	Creates a floating button that triggers an Empty service call when pressed	Assets/RSL/Sensors/Service
Stereo	Stereo camera rendering, renders to each eye for human depth perception	Assets/RSL/Sensors/Camera
TF	Updates for the Unity-ROS TF system for managing robots and reorientation including publishing headset and hands over TF	Assets/RSL/Core/TF
TF Viz	Debug viewer to show currently streamed TF links	Assets/RSL/Core/TF
Voxblox	Voxel mesh rendering	Assets/RSL/Core/VoxBlox
VR Debug	Debugging tools for VR, namely a console	Assets/RSL/Core/VRDebug
VR Streamer	Streams the VR view to a ROS topic (w/o AR view)	Assets/RSL/Telemetry/VRStreamer

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Minor Version History

0.2.0

• Bumped to Unity 6.2 for improved OpenXR and Quest 3 support (note this is the last version of Unity that will support ROS 1 on Ubuntu 20.04, if you are looking for a pre Unity 6 build check out v0.1.1)
• Now supports ROS 1 and ROS 2 in the same build allowing dynamic switching with a new version of the ROS-TCP-Endpoint
• Added Gaussian Splatting as an option for PointCloud messages
• New Robot manager that moves robot models to external repos (see unity_ros_robots for more info)
• Added support for spatial anchors ensuring persistent localization and mapping across sessions
• Improved package naming within the app for cross package imports
• Various bug fixes and improvements
• Added support for 360 stereo image streams

0.1.1

• Added setup scripts and git hooks for easier project setup
• Fixed some image rendering issues with Image Messages
• Added passthrough toggle
• Improved TF modes for Lidar
• Added State buttons for toggles
• Fixes for ROS 2
• Updated docs for setup and usage with streaming
• Added Robots
  • B2W
  • GR2

0.1.0

May need to reset the repo as LFS has been removed from history

• Added 2D version of the app
• Refactored new Manager-Streamer system for standardized message visualizations
• Added new visualizations
  • Markers (without meshes and text)
  • Paths
  • Stamped Poses
  • TF Visualization for frames
  • Grid Maps/Elevation Maps
• Added floating button to trigger Empty service calls
• Redid TF system so the root frame can be dynamic and not locked to odom (also allows functioning without a robot model)
• Improved Pose publishing and allows to work with 2D interface
• Added debug menus to display force
• Overhauled PointCloud rendering for better performance and shader keywords for customized coloring
• Added mesh shaders for efficently render large numbers of procedural meshes
• Improved layout serialization allowing for saving of custom configurations

0.0.9

• Simplified dynaarm model (down to 98 draw calls and 330k tris)
• Fixed TF pose publishing so it should work even without a model
• Removed some duplicated publishers/gameobjects

0.0.8

• Added versioning with display in debug mode
• Added tytan, standalone dynaarm, and franka panda robots
• Updated dynaarm for newer model (may still need simplification)
• Added robot manager for switching between robots

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Citing

If you use this project in your work please cite this paper:

@INPROCEEDINGS{wildersmith2024rfteleoperation,
        author={Wilder-Smith, Maximum and Patil, Vaishakh and Hutter, Marco},
        booktitle={2024 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)}, 
        title={Radiance Fields for Robotic Teleoperation}, 
        year={2024},
        pages={13861-13868},
        doi={10.1109/IROS58592.2024.10801345}
}