ATARICtrl 🤖

📓Content

• 📄Introduction
• 🛠️Easy Setup
• 📖Quick Start

📄Introduction

This repository provides a deployment framework for humanoid robots, supporting the use of different policies across different environments (real robots and simulation).
We decouple the controller, environment, and policy, making it easy for users to add their own policies or environments.
Experiment configurations can be organized through config files.

The main modules of ATARICtrl consist of:

• 🎮 Controller: A collection of control signals. It receives external inputs (e.g., joystick, keyboard, motion sequences) and forwards them as ctrl_data to the pipeline.
• 🤖 Environment: The execution environment (e.g., Mujoco, real robot). It processes actions provided by the policy and sends real-time sensor data as env_data to the pipeline.
• 🌐 Policy: A trained control policy (from various wbc & locomotion works). It generates actions based on information from both the environment and the controller.

Currently, ATARICtrl supports the following policy–environment combinations:

Policy	Unitree G1	Ref	Doc
Unitree Official	🖥️ 🤖	unitree_rl_gym	UnitreePolicy
Unitree Wo Gait	🖥️ 🤖	unitree_rl_lab	UnitreeWoGaitPolicy
Smooth	🖥️ 🤖	Smooth
BeyondMimic	🖥️ 🤖	whole_body_tracking	BeyondmimicPolicy
BeyondMimicObject	🖥️ 🤖	whole_body_tracking	BeyondMimicObjectPolicy

🖥️ means policy is ready for simulation, while 🤖 means policy has been tested on real robot.

🛠️Easy Setup

ATARICtrl supports Ubuntu/Linux platforms, officially tested on Ubuntu.

Robot onboard PCs running Linux are also supported.

1️⃣ Basic Installation

Step 1: Clone the repository and create a Python environment

git clone https://github.com/Atarilab/ATARICtrl.git
cd ATARICtrl/

# Install uv if you haven't already
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Step 2: Create a virtual environment and install AtariCtrl

# Create virtual environment with Python 3.11
uv venv --python 3.11
source .venv/bin/activate 

# Optional, install cpu version for speed up
uv pip install torch --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cpu

# Install AtariCtrl
uv pip install -e .

2️⃣ Install Optional Modules

ATARICtrl is a plug-and-play framework. After a minimal default installation, you can selectively configure and install only the modules you need.

---

Step 0: [Optional] Install Robot SDK

You can skip this for sim2sim and development.

If you plan to control a real robot, install the corresponding SDK.

For example, see unitree_setup.md for Unitree robots.

---

Step 1: Configure modules

Edit submodule_cfg.yaml to select modules, by setting install as true.

As default, mujoco_viewer is selected for sim2sim.

Step 2: Install modules

# Install all required modules
uv run python submodule_install.py

# Or specify modules to install with args
# uv run python submodule_install.py unitree_cpp

📖Quick Start

ATARICtrl is a modular framework where tasks can be flexibly defined by composing configuration files.
In the following, we use the deployment on G1 as an example.

1. Run Sim2Sim
2. Run Sim2Real
3. Deploy More Policies✨

Run ATARICtrl on Simulation

Begin your journey with unitree g1 sim2sim.

A Xbox controller is needed for control.

# run the default g1 sim2sim cfg
uv run python scripts/run_pipeline.py

You can control the motivation using any Xbox controller:

• left axes move forward/backward/lfet/right
• right axes turn left/right

Run ATARICtrl on Real Robot

Alert & Disclaimer ⚠️⚠️⚠️

Before deployment, you'd better first purchase accident insurance to cover any potential incidents that may occur during real-world operation. Policies could cause ⚠️violent motions⚠️ when losing balance. Always verify that the emergency stop button (e.g., A for default config) works properly.

Unless you have strong sim-to-real expertise and rigorous safety measures, DO NOT run these models on real robots. They are provided for research only, and we disclaim any responsibility for harm, loss, or malfunction.

Robot Setup

Follow our setup guide to set up the robot sdk on your computer or robot.

Start ATARICtrl

Open g1_cfg.py and modify the g1_real config.

Edit the env_type and net_if according to your robot sdk setup.

class g1_real(g1):
    env: G1RealEnvCfg = G1RealEnvCfg(
        env_type="UnitreeEnv",  # For unitree_sdk2py
        # env_type="UnitreeCppEnv",  # For unitree_cpp, check README for more details
        unitree=G1UnitreeCfg(
            net_if="eth0",  # note: change to your network interface
        ),
    )

Refer to official guide to prepare and start the robot.

Then start the pipeline on the real robot:

uv run python scripts/run_pipeline.py -c g1_real

Your robot should move into default pos. During the preparation, put your robot on the ground.

You can control the real robot using the Unitree controller:

• A button: Emergency stop. The robot immediately switches to damping mode. Be careful.
• left axes move forward/backward/let/right
• right axes turn left/right

Using Vicon Odometry

ATARICtrl supports Vicon motion capture system for precise robot/objects localization. When Vicon is streaming from the Vicon PC, you can listen to it using the Vicon ZMQ client:

./packages/vicon_zmq_publisher/build/vicon_zmq_client --hostname <host-ip-addr>

Replace <host-ip-addr> with the IP address of the Vicon PC.

To use Vicon Odometry in your configuration, set odometry_type="VICON" and configure vicon_cfg in your environment config. See g1_real_vicon for an example configuration.

Deploy More Policies

💡Now you’re familiar with ATARICtrl’s config design, it’s time to experience the amazing variety of policies!

BeyondMimic

Try the out of box experience of BeyondMimic:

uv run python scripts/run_pipeline.py -c g1_beyondmimic

check documentation BeyondmimicPolicy for more details.

Multi-Policy Switch

g1_switch config in g1_cfg.py is equipped with Multi-Policy Pipeline.

uv run python scripts/run_pipeline.py -c g1_switch

Xbox Controller:

• left axes move forward/backward/left/right

• right axes(left/right) turn left/right

Switch between different policies using the controller.

Loco-Mimic Policy Switch with Interpolation

For deploying Motion Mimic Policies with Locomotion as backup, we built LocoMimicPipeline for multi-policy switching with interpolation,

Check g1_locomimic config in g1_cfg.py, and more fancy locomimic configs in g1_loco_mimic_cfg.py.

uv run python scripts/run_pipeline.py -c g1_locomimic_beyondmimic

Keyboard control:

• [ to switch to MotionMimic
• ] to switch to LocoMotion
• ; toggle next mimic policy
• ' toggle prev mimic policy

More Policies

We also provide config files for other policies, check config_g1 for more details.

🔗 Related Repo

• RoboJudo: Framework
• Unitree SDK2 Python: used for implementing UnitreeEnv.
• PHC: used for implementing the MotionCtrl module for OmniH2O.
• UnitreeCpp: our pybind of unitree_sdk2 used in UnitreeCppEnv.
• ZED Proxy: ZED Camera Odometry Service.