Leatherback Example Ackermann

An awesome template to jumpstart your IsaacSim projects focused on running Inference for Neural Networks !
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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

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 pip install -e 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}},
}