Recently, David Gossow at Willow Garage integrated the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset into RViz and, based on that, created a package for the PR2 robot called PR2 Surrogate. It lets you teleoperate a PR2 using the Oculus Rift and the Razer Hydra game controllers. We’ve been working closely with him to make this publicly available and are happy to announce its release into ROS Groovy Galapagos and Hydro Medusa.

The Oculus Rift is a virtual reality headset that gives you a fully immersive 3D experience by combining an extremely wide field of view and low latency head tracking. It is scheduled to be commercially available in 2014, but a developer kit can already be obtained. The Razer Hydra game controllers consist of two paddles you hold in your hands that precisely track their position and orientation in space. In addition, the controllers have the standard joysticks and buttons you find on a gamepad.