Leatherback Example Ackermann

An awesome template to jumpstart your IsaacSim projects focused on running Inference for Neural Networks !
Coming Soon -- Explore the docs »

Coming Soon -- View Demo · Report an Issue · Request Feature

Intro

This Omniverse Extension is an example to demonstrate how to run inference on IsaacSim with a policy trained on IsaacLab for a F1Tenth car based on the project Leatherback.

This is a template project for developing more complex extensions for IsaacSim focused on running Inference for Neural Networks and more.

Installation

To install, clone this repository into your local machine and create a symbolic link to your Isaac Sim installation.

# or anywhere you prefer
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/boredengineering/leatherback.example.ackermann.git

Create IsaacSim Symbolic Link

Export the following environment variables. Be aware that you must know where you installed isaacsim.

# Isaac Sim root directory
export ISAACSIM_PATH="${HOME}/isaacsim"
# Isaac Sim python executable
export ISAACSIM_PYTHON_EXE="${ISAACSIM_PATH}/python.sh"

Now we create a symbolic link so we can run standalone scripts without having to finding and locating the Isaac Sim installation directory every time.

# create a symbolic link
ln -s ISAACSIM_PATH _isaac_sim
# For example: ln -s ${HOME}/isaacsim _isaac_sim

Note

The symbolic link is not necessary but makes it more convenient and allows for Vscode functionality.

Add the Extension to IsaacSim

This step is important so the Extension Manager can locate the extension.

Step 1 - Go to the isaacsim root installation, (a.k.a where the python.sh is)

Step 2- Add the extension path to the setup_python_env.sh

At the very end of the script for the following line

export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH ................ 

add the path to your awesome extension, as example:

:/home/user/Documents/GitHub/boredengineer/leatherback.example.ackermann

Install dependencies

IsaacSim does not come with the ONNX runtime

./_isaac_sim/python.sh -m pip install onnx onnxruntime

Verify Installation

To verify that the installation is successful, run the standalone script.

./_isaac_sim/python.sh /scripts/leatherback_test.py

Alternatively, you can run the standolate script from the Isaac Sim root directory:

./python.sh /home/goat/Documents/GitHub/boredengineer/leatherback.example.ackermann/scripts/leatherback_test.py

Notes

Note

Extension developed originally with IsaacSim version: 4.5.0-rc.36+release.19112.f59b3005.gl

ROADMAP

The end goal is to facilitate the deployment of trained policies.

• Initial project setup
• DOCS page + material to create your own extension
• Support for JIT
• ZMQ support
• Script for building your own policy controller
• Add testing and debugging for auto-commit
• Linter for improving project readability
• Video Tutorial demo the project and how to use it
• More Examples

BIG PLANS !!!

Acknowledgement

Special thanks for Ashley Goldstein for her awesome work on the Easter Egg

If you find this work useful for your research/project, please be so kind to give a star and citing this work.

@misc{LeatherbackExampleAckermann,
  author       = {Renan Monteiro Barbosa},
  title        = {Leatherback Example Ackermann},
  year         = {2025},
  publisher    = {GitHub},
  journal      = {GitHub repository},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/boredengineering/leatherback.example.ackermann}},
}