UNITE

Documentation

UNITE is a source-available, modular Unity testbed for building and reproducing delayed teleoperation studies. This guide gets you from a fresh clone to a running study, and explains how the pieces fit together.

Overview

Operating a robot in space means working across a communication delay of seconds to minutes, which makes control harder and pushes operators into slow, cautious strategies. Researchers test interfaces and control techniques that help, but each study tends to build its own experimental setup, which makes results hard to reproduce or compare across studies.

UNITE gives you the full experimental apparatus as a single, configurable Unity project. It models the whole teleoperation loop as a set of independent, swappable modules, following the path from the operator's input, up through the communication delay to the robot, and back down through delayed feedback to the operator's display. You describe a study by choosing and configuring modules; the result is a shareable configuration another researcher can open and run without rebuilding anything.

The UNITE telerobotic loop, from operator input through uplink communication to the remote rover and back through downlink feedback The UNITE telerobotic loop, from operator input through uplink communication to the remote rover and back through downlink feedback
UNITE models the full operator-to-robot loop as swappable modules. Numbered labels identify module contracts; asterisks denote internal modules not shown.

What you can do with UNITE

  • Set up and run a delayed-teleoperation study in Unity without writing the plumbing yourself.
  • Swap one part (the delay model, the input device, an assistance technique, the task) while holding everything else fixed.
  • Reproduce or extend a published study from its shared configuration.
  • Capture synchronized, timestamped data for your metrics.

Where to go next

Get started Install UNITE and run your first study. Core concepts The teleoperation loop, modules, and configuration as a study. Module reference Every module: what it does and how to configure or replace it.

License

UNITE is released under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0. Any noncommercial purpose is permitted, and the license explicitly covers use by educational institutions and public research organizations regardless of their source of funding. Commercial use requires a separate license from Hasselt University.

PolyForm Noncommercial is a source-available license, not an OSI-approved open-source license. Copyright in the UNITE software is held by Hasselt University, Digital Future Lab. This documentation site is written and maintained by Dries Cardinaels.

The full license text ships as LICENSE in the UNITE repository. Bundled third-party assets may carry separate terms; these are recorded in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md alongside it.