Isaac ROS Pose Estimation

Overview

Isaac ROS Pose Estimation contains ROS 2 packages to predict the pose of an object. isaac_ros_dope estimates the object’s pose using the 3D bounding cuboid dimensions of a known object in an input image. isaac_ros_centerpose estimates the object’s pose using the 3D bounding cuboid dimensions of unknown object instances in a known category of objects from an input image. isaac_ros_dope and isaac_ros_centerpose use GPU acceleration for DNN inference to estimate the pose of an object. The output prediction can be used by perception functions when fusing with the corresponding depth to provide the 3D pose of an object and distance for navigation or manipulation.

isaac_ros_dope is used in a graph of nodes to estimate the pose of a known object with 3D bounding cuboid dimensions. To produce the estimate, a DOPE (Deep Object Pose Estimation) pre-trained model is required. Input images may need to be cropped and resized to maintain the aspect ratio and match the input resolution of DOPE. After DNN inference has produced an estimate, the DNN decoder will use the specified object type, along with the belief maps produced by model inference, to output object poses.

NVLabs has provided a DOPE pre-trained model using the HOPE dataset. HOPE stands for Household Objects for Pose Estimation. HOPE is a research-oriented dataset that uses toy grocery objects and 3D textured meshes of the objects for training on synthetic data. To use DOPE for other objects that are relevant to your application, the model needs to be trained with another dataset targeting these objects. For example, DOPE has been trained to detect dollies for use with a mobile robot that navigates under, lifts, and moves that type of dolly. To train your own DOPE model, please refer to the Training your Own DOPE Model Tutorial.

isaac_ros_centerpose has similarities to isaac_ros_dope in that both estimate an object pose; however, isaac_ros_centerpose provides additional functionality. The CenterPose DNN performs object detection on the image, generates 2D keypoints for the object, estimates the 6-DoF pose up to a scale, and regresses relative 3D bounding cuboid dimensions. This is performed on a known object class without knowing the instance-for example, a CenterPose model can detect a chair without having trained on images of that specific chair.

Pose estimation is a compute-intensive task and therefore not performed at the frame rate of an input camera. To make efficient use of resources, object pose is estimated for a single frame and used as an input to navigation. Additional object pose estimates are computed to further refine navigation in progress at a lower frequency than the input rate of a typical camera.

Packages in this repository rely on accelerated DNN model inference using Triton or TensorRT from Isaac ROS DNN Inference. For preprocessing, packages in this rely on the Isaac ROS DNN Image Encoder, which can also be found at Isaac ROS DNN Inference.

Quickstarts

• Isaac ROS CenterPose

• Isaac ROS DOPE

Packages

• isaac_ros_centerpose
  • Quickstart
  • Use Different Models
  • Troubleshooting
  • API
• isaac_ros_dope
  • Quickstart
  • Try More Examples
  • Use Different Models
  • Troubleshooting
  • API

Supported Platforms

This package is designed and tested to be compatible with ROS 2 Humble running on Jetson or an x86_64 system with an NVIDIA GPU.

Note

Versions of ROS 2 earlier than Humble are not supported. This package depends on specific ROS 2 implementation features that were only introduced beginning with the Humble release.

Platform	Hardware	Software	Notes
Jetson	Jetson Orin Jetson Xavier	JetPack 5.1.2	For best performance, ensure that power settings are configured appropriately.
x86_64	NVIDIA GPU	Ubuntu 20.04+ CUDA 11.8+

Docker

To simplify development, we strongly recommend leveraging the Isaac ROS Dev Docker images by following these steps. This will streamline your development environment setup with the correct versions of dependencies on both Jetson and x86_64 platforms.

Note

All Isaac ROS Quickstarts, tutorials, and examples have been designed with the Isaac ROS Docker images as a prerequisite.

Customize your Dev Environment

To customize your development environment, reference this guide.

Updates

Date	Changes
2023-10-18	Adding NITROS CenterPose decoder
2023-05-25	Performance improvements
2023-04-05	Source available GXF extensions
2022-06-30	Update to use NITROS for improved performance and to be compatible with JetPack 5.0.2
2022-06-30	Refactored README, updated launch file & added nvidia namespace, dropped Jetson support for CenterPose
2021-10-20	Initial update