WATonomous Humanoid - UWaterloo's First Humanoid Robot

Dockerized ROS 2 stack for controlling and interfacing with the humanoid robot, plus Isaac Lab / MuJoCo simulation, teleop, and imitation learning.

Published docs: https://watonomous.github.io/humanoid-docs/index.html

Quick start (watod)

1. Copy config and pick a module:

cp watod-config.sh watod-config.local.sh
# edit ACTIVE_MODULES and MODE_OF_OPERATION="develop"

2. Build and run:

./watod build
./watod up -d
./watod -t <service>_dev    # shell into a develop container

ACTIVE_MODULES	What it runs
samples	Reference ROS 2 pub/sub pipeline
interfacing	CAN / hardware interfacing
perception	Perception (cameras, GPU)
behaviour	joint_command, voxel_grid
simulation_isaac	Isaac Lab 2.3.2 — SO101 IL, HumanoidRL, Quest teleop
simulation_mj	MuJoCo / mjlab RL (mjlabs service)

Isaac Lab sim (recommended): see docker/simulation/isaac_lab/QUICKSTART.md.

Repo map

humanoid
├── watod                     # Compose orchestrator
├── watod-config.sh           # Defaults (copy → watod-config.local.sh)
├── watod_scripts/            # Dev-env / Docker helpers
├── modules/                  # docker-compose.<module>.yaml
├── docker/                   # Dockerfiles per stack
│   ├── base/
│   ├── samples/
│   ├── interfacing/
│   ├── perception/
│   ├── behaviour/
│   └── simulation/
│       ├── isaac_lab/        # Isaac Lab + LeRobot (primary sim)
│       └── mjlabs/           # MuJoCo / mjlab
├── autonomy/
│   ├── samples/              # ROS 2 coding patterns
│   ├── wato_msgs/            # Shared messages
│   ├── interfacing/          # CAN, DBC, aggregator
│   ├── perception/
│   ├── behaviour/            # joint_command, voxel_grid, octo_map
│   ├── simulation/           # Isaac tasks, teleop, HumanoidRL
│   ├── teleop/               # Quest / rosbridge packages
│   └── il/                   # Imitation learning recording
├── assets/lerobot/           # SO101 USD / vial-task assets
├── docs/                     # Doc conventions + architecture map
├── embedded/                 # STM32, ESP32S3 firmware
├── utils/                    # Package scaffolding helpers
└── camera/                   # Host RealSense utility

Simulation

Stack	Module	Docs
Isaac Lab 2.3.2 / Sim 5.1 (SO101 IL, HumanoidRL, Quest)	simulation_isaac	QUICKSTART · full README
MuJoCo / mjlab	simulation_mj	mjlabs_setup.md
SO101 vial Gym envs	(inside simulation_isaac)	so101_vial_task
Quest bimanual teleop	(inside simulation_isaac)	quest_isaac_teleop
Other teleop variants	host or container	Teleop.md

Isaac Lab needs Linux, NVIDIA GPU, Docker GPU passthrough, and X11 (xhost +local:docker).

Development areas

Area	Start here
ROS node patterns	autonomy/samples/README.md
Imitation learning	autonomy/il/README.md · Isaac QUICKSTART
CAN / hardware	autonomy/interfacing/can/README.md
Messages	autonomy/wato_msgs/common_msgs/README.md
New ROS package	utils/README.md
Doc conventions	docs/README.md
WATO infra (external)	wato_monorepo/docs/dev

CAN setup

If you are talking to the robot over CANable, install host udev rules:

./autonomy/interfacing/can/scripts/can_udev.sh install

Requirements

• Ubuntu ≥ 22.04 (WSL / macOS may work for non-GPU stacks)
• Docker + watod (./watod)
• NVIDIA GPU + drivers for Isaac Lab, perception, and mjlab