Phantom Bridge Documentation

Phantom Bridge is a fast WebRTC ROS2 Bridge written in C++ for real-time ROS2 data visualization and video streaming, teleoperation, human-robot interaction, and both local and remote robot monitoring.

The Bridge comes with Docker container control for the host machine, system load Wi-Fi monitoring, and highly customizable Web Interface for both desktop and mobile touchscreen devices.

This suite is indended to be a modern replacement for RViz, in many cases going beyong what is typically consideted a ROS visualization tool, in order to make robotics development easier. The UI is customizable with JavaScript & CSS plugins, various configuration options make it suitable both as a universal development tool and a customer-facing product.

Features

  • Connects P2P or via a TURN server when P2P link is not possible

  • ~5-10ms RTT on local network, 20ms+ RTT remote teleoperation via a TURN server

  • ROS topic and service discovery

  • Fast streamimg of binary ROS messages (both in a out)

  • Fast H.264 video streaming, ROS Image and CompressedImage topics streamed as H.264 video (hw or sw-encodeded frames)

  • Docker container discovery and control

  • Reliable ROS service calls

  • ROS parameneters discovery, read and write at runtime

  • Keyboard, gamepad and touch interface user input mapped into ROS messages

  • Extra ROS packages can be easily included for custom message type support

  • Robot’s Wi-Fi signal monitoring, network scanning & roaming

  • File retreival from any running Docker container and host fs (such as URDF models)

  • System load, disk space, and Docker stats monitoring

  • Standalone lightweight Bridge Agent for monitoring and management of various parts of a distributed system

  • Multiple peers can connect to the same machine at a very low extra CPU cost

  • Works with rosbag and simulators such as Gazebo, Isaac Sim or Webots

  • Fully open-source under the MIT license; you can host any part of this system

  • User interface customizable with JavaScript & CSS plug-ins

  • No need for an X server running on your robot, nor for any wired connections