Simulation setup on Win11 and Issac-sim

For setting up isaac-sim (not issac) on my win11 machine I followed the following steps: 

(NOTE: You need a recent nvidia GPU for running this simulator, a very powerful card is needed to run this smooth)

  • Download the isaac-sim package from official page at Download Isaac Sim. I chose the version standalone@4.5.0-rc.36+release.19112.f59b3005.gl.windows-x86_64
  • Extract the downloaded package to a directory of your choice. For me it was "E:\sim\isaac_sim"
  • Now there are multiple batch files within in package, which one to choose? The explaination for these scripts is the following 


Mostly the first two are relevant for us, but one can try running any of these, it won't break anything. 
The main app is the second file "isaac-sim.bat" (note the double 'a'). Based on my prior experience with running `isaac-sim` on Ubuntu, this application works much happily with windows than "Ubuntu". Here's what the app looks like (after taking few minutes to load): 




(Another NOTE: Do not panic if this simulator seems to freeze-up on every click, that's the usual)

Once the GUI is up and running, we can load up a Turtlebot: 

- Add ground plane to the current simulation (Menu: Create -> Physics -> Ground Plane)

- Add lights (Menu: Create -> Lights -> Distant light)

- Add Turtlebot (Left Bottom Tab (Issac Sim Assets) -> Robots -> TURTLEBOT (right click on it and "add at current selection")


Once Turtlebot is loaded, we will get this Stage tree (cropped screenshot)


Now to control the robot we will need to add (top left) Tools -> Robotics -> OmniGraph Controllers -> Differential Controller and a dialog will open (as shown in next image). Select Turtlebot under the Robot Prim field, add values for wheel radius and wheel distance and select the checkbox "Use Keyboard Controls". 

Now press the play button to the left and you should be able to actuate the robot by pressing "WSAD" keys.

That's how we can do the quick robot sim with isaac-sim. However, to be of any practical value for robotics, we need more features such as: 
- Ability to programmatically control the robot via scripting or message publishing (ROS2)
- Ability to sense (camera, lidar, odometry)

I will cover how to use ROS2 based differential drive robot control in future.

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