ROS 2 Control Stack for Unitree Go2

Developed as part of the UC Berkeley Master of Engineering capstone project in Mechanical Engineering.

Overview

This repository contains a ROS 2 Humble control stack for the Unitree Go2, including:

• a Streamlit telemetry dashboard
• stand-up initialization
• an InEKF-based state estimator path
• an RL locomotion controller
• arm feedback parsing
• direction intent estimation
• Unitree SDK and description dependencies as submodules

The dashboard can start and stop:

• the main control stack
• the Foxglove bridge

Clone

Clone with submodules:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/elijah-waichong-chan/go2-control-stack

Submodules

Submodule Path	URL
ros2_ws/src/core/go2_odometry	https://github.com/elijah-waichong-chan/go2_odometry.git
ros2_ws/src/vendor/unitree_ros2	https://github.com/unitreerobotics/unitree_ros2
ros2_ws/src/descriptions/unitree_description	https://github.com/inria-paris-robotics-lab/unitree_description.git
ros2_ws/src/vendor/inekf	https://github.com/elijah-waichong-chan/invariant-ekf.git

Docker

Build the image:

sudo docker build -t go2-ros2-control .

Start and run the container:

sudo docker run -d \
  --net=host \
  --mount type=bind,src="$(pwd)",dst=/home/go2-control-stack \
  --name go2-ros2-control \
  go2-ros2-control sleep infinity

Open a shell in the container:

sudo docker exec -it <container_id> bash

To start an existing container later:

sudo docker start go2-ros2-control

Useful Docker commands:

sudo docker image ls
sudo docker ps

Build

Inside the container or on a ROS 2 Humble host:

cd /home/go2-control-stack/ros2_ws
source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash
colcon build --parallel-workers 4 --cmake-clean-cache
source install/setup.bash

Run

Launch the dashboard:

cd /home/go2-control-stack/ros2_ws
source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash
source /home/go2-control-stack/ros2_ws/install/setup.bash
export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_cyclonedds_cpp

source install/setup.bash
ros2 launch locomotion_controller dashboard.launch.py

Then:

1. Open the dashboard on http://localhost:8501
2. Click Start Control Stack to launch the control stack
3. Optionally click Start Foxglove Bridge to launch Foxglove socket node

ROS Bag collection

ros2 bag record -s mcap -o "direction_estimator_bag_$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S)" /data/push_event /lowstate /arm_angles

Workspace Packages

Project Packages

Package	Description
arm_controller	Parses /arm_Feedback, publishes /arm_angles, and exposes arm parser status.
intent_estimator	Direction intent estimation nodes using 1-D CNN models.
estimator_bridge	Converts estimator outputs into the /qdq_est format used by this stack.
go2_msgs	Custom ROS 2 message definitions used across the stack.
locomotion_controller	Stand-up initialization, RL policy control, safety stop handling, and launch files.
telemetry_dashboard	Streamlit dashboard for module status, topic monitoring, and launch controls.

Third-Party Packages

Package	Description
go2_odometry	Forked odometry and state-estimation package, including InEKF runtime nodes.
inekf	Invariant EKF library dependency used by the estimator path.
unitree_arm	Unitree arm interfaces and related dependencies.
unitree_description	Robot description package used by the odometry and state publisher path.
unitree_ros2	Unitree ROS 2 SDK and example packages.