Controlling the Robots

Use Anvil's precise and intuitive control methods to do real work with your robots

Meta Quest

Anvil's advanced IK engine means that you can achieve smooth and easy robot control using the Meta Quest. You don't even need to have the Quest headset on your head or neck, simply place it on the table next to you and get started with the controllers alone.

The Quest headset should stay plugged in to the Anvil Devbox during use; this connection helps facilitate high-rate communication and simultaneous charging. It can be plugged into any available USB port.

Reference image

Grip buttons

The grip buttons, located on the inside of each controller, let you control when the robot responds to your movements. While held, the robot mirrors your motion; release them, and you can freely reposition the controller without triggering any response from the robot.

These are labeled 4 in the reference image.

Trigger buttons

The trigger buttons control the grippers, press them down to close the grippers, release them to open.

These are labeled 1 in the reference image.

A/B buttons

To make data collection easy, the A button will start recording of a new episode and the B button will stop recording. Check out Collecting Data for more info on data collection.

These are labeled 2 in the reference image.

Vibration

If something is affecting the fidelity of a controller's pose tracking (occlusion, battery, etc), the robot will stop tracking movement and the controller will vibrate to indicate the degraded tracking to the user. Make sure the controller is charged and its cameras aren't occluded, and you can get back to controlling your robot.

Leader-Follower

When using this control paradigm, Anvil's control stack maps joint states directly from leader arms to follower arms, facilitating ultra-responsive movement. Control is simple, move the leaders and the followers mimic the movement exactly.