The ROS 2 control bridge over the Unitree SDK drives the 29-DoF G1 with Dex3 hands. Commands are exposed as Distributed Systems & Communication:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The stack is split across three onboard computers so that VLM inference, real-time tracking, and planning\/control\/navigation run on separate devices, each in its own isolated runtime. This keeps heavy model dependencies away from the control loop and removes the dependence on external Wi-Fi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Universal Stack Manager (deployment tool):<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A single Skill Library:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Robot capabilities are wrapped as reusable skills for the task executor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hardware:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Sharing the robot with the sponsor exposed the team to frequent hardware failures: over the fall the team repaired more than ten Dex3 hands and recovered the G1 after a breakdown, followed by a break-in period. The catch-up plan combined repairing the existing robot, provisioning an additional robot, and testing the task executor in simulation during downtime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unitree Interface:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The unitree_interface package is a ROS 2 (Jazzy) bridge for the Unitree G1 humanoid robot that abstracts away DDS communication behind standard ROS topics and services. It’s split into two components: UnitreeInterface, which handles the ROS-facing API including subscriptions, publishers, services, and a control mode state machine, and UnitreeSDKWrapper, which manages all the underlying SDK\/DDS communication. Both share CycloneDDS domain 0, so no domain ID separation is needed. The node operates as a state machine cycling through Monostate, Idle, HighLevel, LowLevel, and Emergency modes. HighLevelMode exposes velocity and arm commands via the locomotion client and arm SDK respectively, while LowLevelMode (compile-time gated) allows direct per-joint motor control with CRC-32 checksums. Joint topology is defined at compile time in topology.hpp, mapping all 29 joints by URDF name to index with gearbox-based default gains. Mode transitions are validated and exposed via a service, joint state feedback is published at ~500Hz, and an estop subscription in both active modes triggers a terminal damping state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fig : Modes and Transitions.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fall 2026 Updates Unitree Interface (updated): The ROS 2 control bridge over the Unitree SDK drives the 29-DoF G1 with Dex3 hands. Commands are exposed as ~\/cmd_vel, ~\/cmd_arm and ~\/cmd_low, and robot setup is exposed as services: ~\/change_mode, ~\/ready_locomotion (damp \u2192 stand \u2192 start), ~\/release_arms, ~\/set_profile (motor gains), ~\/set_hand_pose (Dex3 poses) and ~\/reset_integral_error. The application-side […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":434,"featured_media":0,"parent":93,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-160","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrsdprojects.ri.cmu.edu\/2026teama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrsdprojects.ri.cmu.edu\/2026teama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrsdprojects.ri.cmu.edu\/2026teama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrsdprojects.ri.cmu.edu\/2026teama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/434"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrsdprojects.ri.cmu.edu\/2026teama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrsdprojects.ri.cmu.edu\/2026teama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351,"href":"https:\/\/mrsdprojects.ri.cmu.edu\/2026teama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/160\/revisions\/351"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrsdprojects.ri.cmu.edu\/2026teama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrsdprojects.ri.cmu.edu\/2026teama\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}~\/cmd_vel<\/code>, ~\/cmd_arm<\/code> and ~\/cmd_low<\/code>, and robot setup is exposed as services: ~\/change_mode<\/code>, ~\/ready_locomotion<\/code> (damp \u2192 stand \u2192 start), ~\/release_arms<\/code>, ~\/set_profile<\/code> (motor gains), ~\/set_hand_pose<\/code> (Dex3 poses) and ~\/reset_integral_error<\/code>. The application-side control loop switches between High-level, Low-level, Idle and Emergency modes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Unitree](\"https:\/\/mrsdprojects.ri.cmu.edu\/2026teama\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/92\/2026\/11\/vr-SDR-s19.jpg\")
<\/a>\n
<\/a>.\/scripts\/deploy.sh<\/code> entry point provisions and operates every target over SSH: install, update, assets, build, status, launch, stop and logs, with --dry-run<\/code> support. The workflow is provision (repositories and Pixi environment) \u2192 sync assets (models and checkpoints) \u2192 build (colcon) \u2192 operate (launch, stop and logs in tmux).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a>\n
<\/a><\/a>Spring 2026<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n