Research and development
Project Romulus.
Our first robot, and the foundation for mobile manipulation.
Romulus is a differential-drive robot for LiDAR SLAM, autonomous navigation and computer vision. The robot and its NVIDIA Isaac Sim digital twin run on the same ROS 2 graph, so the same software is developed in simulation and run on the hardware.
Before a robot can manipulate anything, it has to know where it is and get to the work. This phase builds that. The arm comes next.
The LiDAR scan builds a map of the room, the camera looks ahead, and Nav2 drives the planned path to the goal.
Roadmap
ROS 2 · slam_toolbox · Nav2 · NVIDIA Isaac Sim
- 01TeleoperationDrive the robot with a gamepad. The same velocity commands drive its Isaac Sim twin.
- 02LiDAR SLAMA spinning LiDAR and slam_toolbox build a map of the room.
- 03Autonomous navigationSet a goal on the map. Nav2 plans a path around known obstacles and drives it.
- 04Computer visionThe onboard camera tracks a ball and the robot follows it: the first perception loop, before a gripper.
- 05Digital twinLiDAR, camera and wheel odometry publish the same ROS 2 topics in simulation and on the robot.
- 06ManipulationGPU-accelerated perception with Isaac ROS, and policies trained in Isaac Lab and deployed on the robot. Then we choose the arm and define the mobile manipulator.