Run nanosaur with gz-omni connector

September 4, 2022

If you want to work with the gz-omni connector you need to install some extra steps on your desktop

Install

before to follow this tutorial, install nanosaur simulators!

The gz-omni connector use:

Ignition Gazebo - Edifice
NVIDIA Isaac SIM
gz-omni connector

Follow the instruction below to install Ignition Gazebo (not default simulator for ROS 2) and in another terminal install the gz-omni connector

Install Ignition Gazebo - Edifice

GZ-omni works with only with Ignition Gazebo - Edifice. You need to install on your desktop this Ignition Gazebo version following the lines below

sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-pip wget lsb-release gnupg curl
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.asc | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3-vcstool python3-colcon-common-extensions
sudo apt-get install git libfreeimage-dev

sudo apt-get install ignition-edifice

Compile gz-omni

We need to compile some Ignition packages from source with a specific flag due the omni-client library.

To compile this libraries you should run:

mkdir -p ~/ign-omni/src
cd ~/ign-omni/src
git clone https://github.com/ignitionrobotics/ign-omni-meta
vcs import . < ign-omni-meta/repos.yaml
cd protobuf
git -C . apply ../ign-omni-meta/protobuf-cmake.patch
cd ~/ign-omni
colcon build --merge-install --event-handlers console_direct+ --packages-select protobuf
cp src/ign-omni-meta/colcon.meta .
colcon build --merge-install --event-handlers console_direct+ --packages-up-to ignition-omniverse1

You can ignore the following message:

WARNING:colcon.colcon_cmake.task.cmake.build:Could not run installation step for package 'ignition-omniverse1' because it has no 'install' target

Run gz-omni Connector

There are three steps to do:

Run Ignition Gazebo in a terminal

Open your first terminal and run Ignition Gazebo

source nanosaur
ros2 launch nanosaur_ignition ignition.launch.py

When the simulator is running you will see a window like below

Run gz-omni connector

Now it’s time to start the gz-omni connector:

export IGN_GAZEBO_RESOURCE_PATH="/opt/ros/foxy/share:$HOME/nanosaur_core/install/share"
source ~/ign-omni/install/setup.bash
cd ~/ign-omni/src/ign-omni
reset && bash run_ignition_omni.sh -p omniverse://localhost/Users/nanosaur/nanosaur.usd -w lab -v --pose ignition

How is it works the last line?

bash run_ignition_omni.sh -p omniverse://localhost/Users/<USER_NAME>/nanosaur.usd -w <WORLD> -v --pose <TYPE_POSE>

USER_NAME: the user name chosen in NVIDIA nucleus server
WORLD: The world name is running on the Ignition Gazebo simulation, if you want to change follow the Ignition tutorial
TYPE_POSE: Which simulator will handle the poses {ignition, isaacsim}

if you see a line like this [Dbg] [main.cpp:122] fps: 59.7457 the connector is working properly