A physics-aware simulation and learning platform for planetary rovers, built on Isaac Lab. Terrain elevation, rock occupancy, semantics and soil physical properties are represented as spatially aligned fields; the same fields drive rendering, collision, the vectorized semi-empirical wheel–terrain model, simulator ground truth and policy observations. The platform supports height-scan navigation for the Hunter SE off-road rover and the Zhurong Mars rover, and ships a geometry / +semantic / +physics observation-ablation baseline.
This project is under active development; interfaces and features may change.
- Ubuntu 22.04
- NVIDIA RTX GPU (32 GB VRAM recommended for large batch sizes)
- Isaac Sim 5.0
- Isaac Lab 2.2 (the
isaaclabPython package) - conda environment
env_isaaclab(Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab and PyTorch) - Optional: ROS 2 Humble (online elevation/friction mapping in
ros2_ws/, conda envros2_env)
Install Isaac Lab following the official guide: isaac-sim.github.io/IsaacLab/v2.2.1
pip install -e source/physplanet_assets
pip install -e source/physplanet_tasks
pip install -e source/physplanet_rlsource/physplanet_tasks registers three observation conditions (Zhurong rover,
soft-soil terrain):
| Task ID | Observation |
|---|---|
Isaac-ZhurongNavHeightscan-v10 |
Baseline: height scan + dimension-matched zero-filled semantic/physics fields |
Isaac-ZhurongNavHeightscan-v11 |
+Semantic: aligned one-hot semantic field |
Isaac-ZhurongNavHeightscan-v12 |
+Physics: semantic + aligned physical field (n0, φ) |
Isaac-HunterNavHeightscan-v0 |
Hunter SE chassis baseline |
Train and play:
python source/physplanet_rl/physplanet_rl/train.py --task Isaac-ZhurongNavHeightscan-v10 --num_envs 512
python source/physplanet_rl/physplanet_rl/play.py --task Isaac-ZhurongNavHeightscan-v10The terrain scene is selected through the ROVER_TERRAIN environment variable
(default rl_demo/heightscan/01_easy).
Terrain generation WebUI:
~/IsaacLab/isaaclab.sh -p source/physplanet_assets/terrain_generation/ui/webui.py
# open http://localhost:7860Simulation configuration WebUI:
~/IsaacLab/isaaclab.sh -p source/physplanet_assets/test/sim_webui.py
# open http://localhost:7861Command-line terrain generation, hard/soft terrain tests and ROS 2 teleoperation are documented in source/physplanet_assets/README.md; ROS 2 elevation mapping is documented in ros2_ws/README.md.
Released under the MIT License. Portions adapted from RLRoverLab, WheeledLab and Isaac Lab retain their original license headers — see THIRD_PARTY.md.
The paper describing PhysPlanet is under review; citation information will be added upon publication.