rmw_zenoh support

[mindThomas]

Currently Isaac Sim comes bundled with rmw_fastrtps_cpp and rmw_cyclonedds_cpp.
But many of us have been transitioning to the Zenoh middleware layer thanks to its easy of use in particular when connecting networked robots and devices.

For us, we would like to be able to connect to Isaac Sim simulation instances running on either internal simulation computers or in the cloud. One option to do so currently is through the use of the zenoh-bridge-ros2dds. This still relies on DDS on both the Isaac Sim side and any other client sides. Zenoh is only used for the network connection in between. Ideally, such a setup should use Zenoh all the way from ROS node to ROS node without any conversion.

What will it take to include rmw_zenoh_cpp into the bundled ROS version?

[vick-yu]

Thanks for the request and for outlining your Zenoh use case. We are still evaluating whether to add rmw-zenoh-cpp to the bundled ROS setup and will update this discussion when we have concrete news.

[ayushgnv]

Hi @mindThomas,

Isaac Sim 6.0 supports python 3.12. Therefore we are able to source ROS 2 directly in the same terminal again.

If you source ROS 2 with rmw2-zenoh-cpp installed before launching sim, we should be able to directly interface with the Zenoh router in the same host.

While yes it techinically we havent bundled Zenoh with Sim yet, that is something we are looking into for a future release.

Instructions for luanching Isaac Sim 6.0 and Zenoh is here: https://docs.isaacsim.omniverse.nvidia.com/6.0.0/installation/install_ros.html#isaac-sim-app-install-zenoh\

If you need to run Isaac Sim in Ubuntu 22.04 then I would recommend trying to build Humble-Zenoh with Python 3.12.

Hope that helps for now!

[mindThomas]

It does indeed. This is great news.
Thanks for the update. I will give Isaac Sim 6.0 a try.