About ZeroSim

ZeroSim is a robotics simulation engine built on the easy-to-use Unity 3D development platform and the power of the Robotics Operating System (ROS). ZeroSim is designed for ease of use and rapid development of all sorts of robotics and simulation -- from warehouses and industrial settings, to farming and outdoors -- from robotic arms to ground and drone-based mobile robots.

ZeroSim is a project developed over several years by FS Studios for the rapid development of all sorts of robotic simulation projects for various clients, from robotic arms to mobile robots.

We are releasing ZeroSim as open-source to support the community of roboticist and software engineers that have supported us over the decades. We are in active development and welcome all feature requests, bug reports, and pull requests.

ZeroSim provides a multitude of tools for building robots and environments in Unity to interface with ROS. We strive to provide the same functionality and ROS interfaces of Gazebo. Including:

• Dynamics simulation using the latest PhysX 4.x integrated in Unity.

  • Hinge, ball, linear and fixed joints.
  • Temporal Gauss-Seidel solver option making articulated or jointed configurations much more robust.

• Advanced 3D Rendering, including the latest real-time ray tracing technology.

• Sensors:

  • 2D LIDAR -> ROS LaserScan message.
  • 3D LIDAR -> ROS LaserScan message.
  • Color camera -> ROS Image and ROS CameraInfo message.
  • Color + depth camera -> ROS Image and ROS CameraInfo message.
  • Stereo camera -> ROS Image and ROS CameraInfo message.
  • IMU -> ROS Imu message
  • Magnetometer -> ROS MagneticField message.
  • Contact switch
  • Altimeter

• Ready to use ROS standard controllers and plugins:

  • Differential drive. Controlled via standard ROS Twist message.
  • Robotic arm controller via the ROS FollowJointTrajectory Action Controller Interface allowing MoveIt to connect seamlessly with ZeroSim.
  • ROS TF publisher.
  • ROS JointState publisher.

• Full ROS messaging communications layers API.

  • Premade standard ROS messages
  • Subscribe and publish
  • Action Servers
  • Fast and efficient message encoding using ROS Bridge and BSON over TCP.

• Ready to run prebuilt ROS Docker images available publically on DockerHub: https://hub.docker.com/r/zerodog/zerosim_ros_vnc

• Machine Learning tools:

  • Image Segmentation for training semantic segmentation algorithms.

• COMING SOON:

  • More complete documentation.
  • URDF import & export.
  • Finish Docker integration with Unity. (Currently incomplete)
  • Secure communications via WebSockets.
  • Support for other Physics engines such as Bullet or Havok.

API Documentation

3. In the VNC window press the LEFT mouse button and select "Terminal".

In the new terminal run rviz -d ./src/zero_sim_ros/rviz/turtlebot_viewer.rviz. RViz will start up with a 3D view with the LIDAR scanner visibile.

NOTE: Order of operations is important. Especially starting the Docker before the Unity simulation.

1. Make sure that the ZeroSim samples are installed as outlined above.
2. Make sure that the ZeroSim Docker container above is installed.
3. Open the UniversalRobot_UR10_test.scene

4. Launch the ZeroSim Docker via:

docker run -it --rm
--publish=9090:9090
--publish=11311:11311
--publish=8083:8083
--publish=80:80
--publish=5678:5678
--name my_zerosim_vnc_docker
zerodog/zerosim_ros_vnc:latest
roslaunch zero_sim_ros ur10_moveit.launch

5. Start the UR10 test Scene by pressing the Play button.
6.Open a noVNC connection by: 

1. In a browser open http://localhost:8083/vnc.html
   
   
2. Press the "Connect" button.,

In the noVNC window RViz will be setup with MoveIt

You can now to standard MoveIt! operations in RViz to control the UR10 arm