00mjk / ros_reality_bridge

Bridge to connect ROS network to Unity

NOTE: This repo is maintained for use with some legacy code within the lab, but our new VR/AR projects are based on Ros-Sharp, an open-source Unity/ROS connector developed by Siemens. Their main GitHub page is here, and a fork we maintain that allows use with the HoloLens is here

ROS REALITY BRIDGE

Hi, and welcome to ROS Reality Bridge, a virtual reality teleoperation interface for ROS enabled robots (we use a Baxter, but the code could easily be modified for any ROS robot). This readme contains all the information you need to get started.

Overview

This package connects a ROS network to a remote windows machine running Unity, and uses sensor data sent on ROS topics to populate a virtual reality scene. The sensors we use are a Kinect v2, the wrist cameras of the robot, and the joint encoders of the robot.

Dependencies

For this tutorial, we will focus on controlling a Baxter robot. Therefore you will need to install the Baxter SDK on you computer. You can find instructions for that here: http://sdk.rethinkrobotics.com/wiki/Workstation_Setup

If you want to send commands back from the Unity computer, we recommend you use Ein, which sits on top of the native Baxter SDK, and gives a higher level of control, like end effector Cartesian coordinate positioning. Download and install it here: http://h2r.github.io/ein/

NOTE: Ein is not needed if you pull from no-ein branch. This directly uses the built in IK solver from the Baxter SDK.

To connect the Kinect to the ROS network, we use IAI Kinect, a ROS package found here: https://github.com/code-iai/iai_kinect2

To calibrate the Kinect, we use this package: https://github.com/ShibataLabPrivate/kinect_baxter_calibration

Finally, you will need to install rosbridge. You can install it via apt-get sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-rosbridge-suite

Running ROS Reality

To start ROS Reality, simply run the following command on your Baxter workstation:

roslaunch ros_reality_bridge ros_reality_bridge.launch

Great, now this computer is sending information about the ROS network. Go to your Unity computer and follow the intstructions here: https://github.com/h2r/ROS_Unity