SteamVR to CoppeliaSim to ROS
Posted: 01 Feb 2020, 20:00
I would like to use VR to program robotics. I am having some trouble getting a complete toolchain running though. The CoppeliaSim-VR-Toolbox app that connects steamvr to CoppeliaSim only seems to run in Windows. This seems to make sense as steamvr strongly prefers to be running on Windows anyway. However the rosinterface plugin for CoppeliaSim appears to only be available for linux! This would also seem to make sense as ROS strongly prefers to run on linux. How to actually get it to go then? :)
The most promising thing I have tried so far is to have steamvr and the coppeliasim-vr-toolbox running in windows and then set up a port forwarder for 19997 to a linux vm running coppeliasim. This seems to work for a moment but promptly crashes out trying to transfer the scene assets.
The other idea I had was to attempt to make a windows dll version of the rosinterface library ... but that sounds non-trivial from where I'm sitting.
For the moment I can probably work around the problem by training in windows coppelia and then copying the scene to linux coppelia to drive the bot. However, this clearly won't allow live control of a robot from the vr interface so long term it would be ideal to get the full chain running somehow.
Am I missing something and making this harder than it needs to be? I am open to suggestions on how to get this full toolchain running.
The most promising thing I have tried so far is to have steamvr and the coppeliasim-vr-toolbox running in windows and then set up a port forwarder for 19997 to a linux vm running coppeliasim. This seems to work for a moment but promptly crashes out trying to transfer the scene assets.
The other idea I had was to attempt to make a windows dll version of the rosinterface library ... but that sounds non-trivial from where I'm sitting.
For the moment I can probably work around the problem by training in windows coppelia and then copying the scene to linux coppelia to drive the bot. However, this clearly won't allow live control of a robot from the vr interface so long term it would be ideal to get the full chain running somehow.
Am I missing something and making this harder than it needs to be? I am open to suggestions on how to get this full toolchain running.