openvr_ros_bridge

Publishes poses from HMD/controllers/anything trackable from OpenVR on Windows to ROS. It can also publish JSON to a generic websocket target, or log poses to a file.

Prerequisites

• Windows: 64 bit windows and directx 11 support (e.g., a VR capable machine)
• [optional] ROS: the rosbridge suite

Installation

Easy option: download the binary release and unzip somewhere convenient.

Harder option: compile truss, zip all the folders in truss/dist into truss.zip, and place truss.zip and truss.exe in the root of this repo.

Usage

General / File logging

SteamVR should be started before the bridge, otherwise the bridge will itself try to start SteamVR, which is unreliable and may lead to a freeze or a crash.

truss scripts/bridge.t url_or_filename config_script_name.t

For example, the config script config/default.t will log to a text file in csv format. To log to "my_log.txt", run

truss scripts/bridge.t my_log.txt default.t

ROS

On a machine with ROS:

1. Start a roscore
2. Launch the ros web bridge: roslaunch rosbridge_server rosbridge_websocket.launch

On a windows machine with OpenVR and HMD connected:

1. Start SteamVR (optional, but greatly speeds up startup)
2. In a command prompt, navigate to the openvr_ros_bridge folder
3. In prompt run: truss scripts/bridge.t "ws://[host]:[port]" ros.t. Note that the default rosbridge port is 9090, so this will look something like truss scripts/bridge.t "ws://othercomp:9090" ros.t.

Configuration

Config scripts should be placed in scripts/config/. The file scripts/config/default.t contains the default configuration that will log poses to a file in CSV format. By default only controllers and generic trackables are logged.

File logging configuration

local publishers = require("file_publishers.t")
local config = {}
config.Connection = publishers.FileConnection
config.Controller = {
  topic = "controller_%d",
  publisher = publishers.Pose,
  display = true
}
return config

The file Pose publisher accepts the following additional options

Option	Description	Default
decimate	Publish only 1 in n frames	9
field_order	Ordered list of fields to write to CSV	{"time", "position", "quaternion"}
divider	Field divider	","
precision	Numerical precision to write	4
format	Numerical format string (overrides precision)	"%.4f"

ROS publishing configuration

local publishers = require("ros_publishers.t")
local config = {}
config.Connection = publishers.ROSConnection
config.Controller = {
  topic = "/vr/controller_%d",
  publisher = publishers.Pose,
  display = true
}
return config

The ROS Pose publisher accepts the following additional options

Option	Description	Default
decimate	Publish only 1 in n frames	9
tf_frame	ROS TF frame to associate PoseStamped messages with	"0"
queue_size	Maximum ROS queue size	10

Visualization configuration

Visualization options are independent of publishing/logging, and are specified in the display options in a configuration. Setting display = true uses the default visualization option, which is to just show the model. Likewise, display = false will not display anything (but will still publish if publication options are set).

Additional visualization options can be included by setting display.

local vis = require("visualizers.t")

config.Controller = {
  -- [...]
  display = {vis.BasicModel(), vis.LineHistory()} -- show model and trails
}

Note the slightly unconventional syntax of having to actually call/construct the visualizer options, which is to allow additional options to be passed to a specific visualizer.

LineHistory

Adds a trail to a trackable.

vis.LineHistory({
  history_length = 900,    -- how many points the line can have
  decimate = 3,            -- only push a new point every n frames
  color = {0.8, 0.3, 0.3}, -- line color, in [0,1] RGB format
  thickness = 0.005        -- line thickness, in m
})

BasicModel

Shows a mesh model for the trackable, loaded from OpenVR.

vis.BasicModel({
  diffuse = {0.03,0.03,0.03,1.0},   -- diffuse color
  specular = {0.001, 0.001, 0.001}, -- specular color
  roughness = 0.7                   -- roughness
})