Template for Navigation Isaac Lab Projects

Overview

This repository fork serves as a template for building projects or extensions based on Isaac Lab, specifically for navigation projects. It allows you to develop in an isolated environment, outside of the core Isaac Lab repository.

Out the box, the code here should allow you to train a basic navigation policy using one forwards-facing stereolabs zed camera, in a basic environment.

The code skeleton here is very lightweight, because all shared navigation components live in isaac-nav-suite, and this template just assembles them in an example env_cfg file in a way that works out the box, and demonstrates how to set up your directory structure. NOTE: at present, the necessary navigation components are not yet checked into the main branch of isaac-nav-suite, so to get a working project out the box, you should check out the dev/kappi/perceptnet branch.

Setup Steps:

1. You should use the "use this template" button instead of forking this repo, so it doesn't end up public.
2. Once you have got the template, you should add it as a git submodule to IsaacLab-Internal
3. Run git submodule update --init --recursive in IsaacLab-Internal, to automatically get the right version of isaac-nav-suite pulled down (it is a submodule in this template)
4. Update the names of the files in your repo from the template (instructions below, using the included script)
5. Symlink the isaac-nav-suite modules and your extension module in IsaacLab-Internal/source/extensions, like so:

6. Run isaaclab.sh -i from the IsaacLab-Internal level of your project so that the extraPaths section in your .vscode settings.json links to the new extension links you made ("${workspaceFolder}/source/extensions/nav_tasks" etc). Check that your extension shows up or the python linking won't work.
7. Set up your top level (IsaacLab-Internal) launch file in .vscode. launch.json can include launch configurations so you don't have to enter command line args every time you run, then you can use the Run and Debug menu:

to run different versions of your project. Here's an example entry in launch.json.

        {
            "name": "Python: Train Environment",
            "type": "debugpy",
            "request": "launch",
            "args" : [
                "--task", "Isaac-Navigation-NavigationTemplate-PPO-Anymal-D-TRAIN", 
                "--num_envs", "400",
                "--headless",
                "--enable_cameras",
                "--video",
                "--video_length=200",
                "--video_interval=4000", ],
            "program": "${workspaceFolder}/crowd_navigation_mt/scripts/rsl_rl/train.py",
            "console": "integratedTerminal",
            "envFile": "${workspaceFolder}/.vscode/.python.env",
        },
        {
            "name": "Python: Dev Environment",
            "type": "debugpy",
            "request": "launch",
            "args" : ["--task", "Isaac-Navigation-NavigationTemplate-PPO-Anymal-D-DEV", "--num_envs", "5"],
            "program": "${workspaceFolder}/crowd_navigation_mt/scripts/rsl_rl/train.py",
            "console": "integratedTerminal",
            "envFile": "${workspaceFolder}/.vscode/.python.env",
        },
        {
            "name": "Python: Play Environment",
            "type": "debugpy",
            "request": "launch",
            "args" : [
                "--task", "Isaac-Navigation-NavigationTemplate-PPO-Anymal-D-PLAY",
                "--num_envs", "2",
                "--load_run",
                "2024-10-07_23-48-35_PPO",
                "--checkpoint",
                "model_200.pt"],
            "program": "${workspaceFolder}/crowd_navigation_mt/scripts/rsl_rl/play.py",
            "console": "integratedTerminal",
            "envFile": "${workspaceFolder}/.vscode/.python.env",
        },

The rest of this README is the same as the general extension template README, for extra context.

Key Features:

• Isolation Work outside the core Isaac Lab repository, ensuring that your development efforts remain self-contained.
• Flexibility This template is set up to allow your code to be run as an extension in Omniverse.

Keywords: extension, template, isaaclab

Installation

• Install Isaac Lab by following the installation guide. We recommend using the conda installation as it simplifies calling Python scripts from the terminal.

• Clone the repository separately from the Isaac Lab installation (i.e. outside the IsaacLab directory):

# Option 1: HTTPS
git clone https://github.com/isaac-sim/IsaacLabExtensionTemplate.git

# Option 2: SSH
git clone git@github.com:isaac-sim/IsaacLabExtensionTemplate.git

• Throughout the repository, the name crowd_navigation_mt only serves as an example and we provide a script to rename all the references to it automatically:

# Enter the repository
cd crowd_navigation_mt
# Rename all occurrences of crowd_navigation_mt (in files/directories) to your_fancy_extension_name
python scripts/rename_template.py your_fancy_extension_name

• Using a python interpreter that has Isaac Lab installed, install the library

python -m pip install -e exts/crowd_navigation_mt

• Verify that the extension is correctly installed by running the following command:

python scripts/rsl_rl/train.py --task=Isaac-Navigation-NavigationTemplate-PPO-Anymal-D-DEV

Set up IDE (Optional)

To setup the IDE, please follow these instructions:

• Run VSCode Tasks, by pressing Ctrl+Shift+P, selecting Tasks: Run Task and running the setup_python_env in the drop down menu. When running this task, you will be prompted to add the absolute path to your Isaac Sim installation.

If everything executes correctly, it should create a file .python.env in the .vscode directory. The file contains the python paths to all the extensions provided by Isaac Sim and Omniverse. This helps in indexing all the python modules for intelligent suggestions while writing code.

Setup as Omniverse Extension (Optional)

We provide an example UI extension that will load upon enabling your extension defined in exts/crowd_navigation_mt/crowd_navigation_mt/ui_extension_example.py. For more information on UI extensions, enable and check out the source code of the omni.isaac.ui_template extension and refer to the introduction on Isaac Sim Workflows 1.2.3. GUI.

To enable your extension, follow these steps:

1. Add the search path of your repository to the extension manager:

   • Navigate to the extension manager using Window -> Extensions.
   • Click on the Hamburger Icon (☰), then go to Settings.
   • In the Extension Search Paths, enter the absolute path to IsaacLabExtensionTemplate/exts
   • If not already present, in the Extension Search Paths, enter the path that leads to Isaac Lab's extension directory directory (IsaacLab/source/extensions)
   • Click on the Hamburger Icon (☰), then click Refresh.

2. Search and enable your extension:

   • Find your extension under the Third Party category.
   • Toggle it to enable your extension.

Code formatting

We have a pre-commit template to automatically format your code. To install pre-commit:

pip install pre-commit

Then you can run pre-commit with:

pre-commit run --all-files

Troubleshooting

Pylance Missing Indexing of Extensions

In some VsCode versions, the indexing of part of the extensions is missing. In this case, add the path to your extension in .vscode/settings.json under the key "python.analysis.extraPaths".

{
    "python.analysis.extraPaths": [
        "<path-to-ext-repo>/exts/crowd_navigation_mt"
    ]
}

Pylance Crash

If you encounter a crash in pylance, it is probable that too many files are indexed and you run out of memory. A possible solution is to exclude some of omniverse packages that are not used in your project. To do so, modify .vscode/settings.json and comment out packages under the key "python.analysis.extraPaths" Some examples of packages that can likely be excluded are:

"<path-to-isaac-sim>/extscache/omni.anim.*"         // Animation packages
"<path-to-isaac-sim>/extscache/omni.kit.*"          // Kit UI tools
"<path-to-isaac-sim>/extscache/omni.graph.*"        // Graph UI tools
"<path-to-isaac-sim>/extscache/omni.services.*"     // Services tools
...