BestMan: A Modular Mobile Manipulator Platform for Embodied AI with Unified Simulation-Hardware APIs

Chongqing University    Shanghai AI Laboratory    Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

Welcome to the official repository of BestMan!

A mobile manipulator (with a wheel-base and arm) platform built on PyBullet simulation with unified hardware APIs.

📋 Contents

• 📋 Contents
• 🔥 News
• 🎯 Framework
• 🏠 Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
• 👨‍💻 Basic Demos
  • 🌏 Overview
  • 🚀 Run
  • 🎇 Blender Render
• 📝 TODO List
• 🤝 Reference
• 👏 Acknowledgements
• 🚀 Working citing BestMan

🔥 News

• [2024-11] We released version 0.2.0, optimizing modules such as Install and Robotics API.
• [2024-10] We release the paper of BestMan.

🎯 Framework

🏠 Getting Started

Prerequisites

Note: We recommand Ubuntu 22.04 and python version deault to 3.8.

• Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04
• Conda
  • Python 3.8, 3.9, 3.10

Installation

We provide the installation guide here. You can install locally or use docker and verify the installation easily.

👨‍💻 Basic Demos

🌏 Overview

demos.mp4

🚀 Run

Enter Examples directory and run the demos. You can also modify the parameters corresponding to the demo.

🎇 Blender Render

open microwave demo in Overview before blender rendering:

open_microwave.mp4

We have improved the pybullet-blender-recorder to import pybullet scene into blender for better rendering

If you want to enable pybullet-blender-recorder, please：

1. Install the pyBulletSimImporter.py plugin under Visualization/blender-render directory in blender (Edit->Preferences->Add-ons->Install) (test on blender3.6.5) , and enalbe this plugin.

2. Set blender: Ture in Config/xxx.yaml.

3. After running the demo, a pkl file will be generated and saved in Examples/record dir

4. Import the pkl files into blender.

Note: This will freeze the current blender window before the processing is completed, please wait.

Note: If the demo contains too many frames, you can change pyBulletSimImporter.py: ANIM_OT_import_pybullet_sim(): skip_frames parameters and reinstall in blender to reduce the number of imported frames.

📝 TODO List

• Release the platform with basic modules、functions and demos.
• Polish APIs, related codes, and release documentation.
• Release the paper with framework and demos Introduction.
• Release the baseline models and benchmark modules.
• Dynamically integrate digital assets.
• Comprehensive improvement and further updates.

🤝 Reference

If you find this work useful, please consider citing:

@inproceedings{Yang2024BestManAM,
  title={BestMan: A Modular Mobile Manipulator Platform for Embodied AI with Unified Simulation-Hardware APIs},
  author={Kui Yang and Nieqing Cao and Yan Ding and Chao Chen},
  year={2024},
  url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:273403368}
}

👏 Acknowledgements

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the individuals and organizations who contributed to this project.

For a detailed list of acknowledgements, please refer to appendix.

🚀 Working citing BestMan

Research has already been conducted based on the BestMan platform. If you are interested, please visit here for more details.