Test Assets

test-assets

The test-data umbrella for robium. Every smoke, regression, or policy-eval test consumes data (a world to load, a robot model to spawn, a dataset slice to train on, a bag to replay, a golden to diff against), and picking those assets ad hoc produces unrecognizable, irreproducible fixtures. This skill owns which canonical assets to test against for a given robot type, the standard test-assets folder layout with its provenance manifest, and the sourcing decision (pointer vs vendored). It does not own the test pyramid and pass bars (testing), training-data sourcing strategy (data), simulator selection rationale (simulation), or asset loading/spawning mechanics (gazebo, isaac-sim).

When to use this skill

• Setting up test data for any new robotics project; load together with testing: that skill decides which pyramid layers to build; this one supplies the data those layers run against.
• The trigger phrases in the description: 'test assets', 'test world', 'test fixture', 'download a test dataset', 'sample rosbag', 'which world should I test in', 'golden output', 'regression fixture'.
• Choosing a world, robot model, or sample dataset for a smoke or regression test, including "we should own copies of these" vendoring decisions.
• Standing up a test-assets/ folder (or auditing an existing one) for a repo's apps.
• Cross-references: go to the sibling skill instead when the question is:
  • Test structure, layers, and pass bars (what to test, when it counts as done) → testing. This skill only supplies the data.
  • Sourcing training data for robot learning (offline vs sim-generated vs teleop) → data. Same funnel instinct, different artifact: data feeds policies, this skill feeds tests.
  • Which simulator to use at all → simulation; this skill's matrix names a best-fit simulator per robot type for testing but cites simulation for the selection rationale.
  • Loading/spawning mechanics for the chosen assets → gazebo or isaac-sim; MuJoCo asset usage inside LeRobot environments → lerobot.
  • Hub download/upload mechanics and auth → huggingface; the LeRobotDataset format itself → lerobot.

Key directives

• Delegation posture: embed + links. The catalog, layout, and sourcing policy live here (with pinned upstream links); mechanics of loading, spawning, or converting assets live in the tool skills; simulator choice logic stays with simulation.
• Canonical-assets-first. Prefer a well-known public asset (see references/canonical-assets.md) over authoring or hosting your own; recognizability is part of a fixture's value: reviewers and contributors already know how a TurtleBot3 world or pusht should behave.
• Choose a sourcing mode deliberately (pointer or vendored) and record it. Pointer: pin upstream revisions (Fuel version, git commit, HF revision), fetch on demand, never commit data. Vendored: commit real copies under a stated size budget, every asset with full provenance in the manifest and its license verified at vendor time. Either way, anything with no public source is produced by a committed seeded generator script, not committed by hand; expensive-to-regenerate recordings can be hosted as MCAP in a Hub dataset repo as the escape hatch (mechanics → huggingface).
• Goldens are bands, not checksums. Physics is noisy; reference trajectories and metrics carry tolerances and seeds; exact-match comparison is only valid for pure-replay tests where no simulation re-runs.
• Derived fixtures compound. One verified scenario's output (a SLAM map, a recorded bag) becomes the next scenario's input; prefer this over importing unrelated data, and record the derivation in the manifest.
• Never write asset facts from memory. Revisions, licenses, episode counts, and download URLs change; verify against the live source at adoption time. references/canonical-assets.md records how and when each entry was verified; keep that discipline for entries you add.

Quick start

1. Identify the robot type under test and pick model + world + dataset from the suitability matrix in Decision guidance (details and links in references/canonical-assets.md).

2. Choose the sourcing mode with the funnel in Decision guidance and record it (and the size budget, if vendoring) in the test-assets README.

3. Write the manifest. Create the folder per references/test-assets-layout.md and describe each asset in MANIFEST.yaml; examples/assets-manifest.yaml is a working starting point.

4. Fetch:

uv run scripts/vendor_assets.py --manifest test-assets/MANIFEST.yaml

Re-run any time to refresh; --check verifies presence and pins without fetching. Commit the result (vendored mode) or gitignore the data dirs (pointer mode).

5. Wire the assets into the testing pyramid and record goldens from a known-good seeded run into goldens/ with explicit tolerances.

Decision guidance

Robot type → test-asset suitability (selection details, licenses, and links live in references/canonical-assets.md; simulator-choice rationale → simulation):

Sourcing-mode funnel:

Shared CI/regression corpus you must inspect and that must survive
upstream changes?            → vendored (size-budgeted, full provenance)
Personal/dev use, or asset too large to vendor?   → pointer (pinned)
No public canonical source (nav bags, goldens)?   → seeded generator script
Expensive to regenerate (long sim, GPU-gated)?    → Hub-hosted MCAP escape hatch

Which pyramid layer needs which data (the pyramid itself → testing):

Platform gotchas

• Fuel assets need the gz CLI and network on first fetch. They cache under ~/.gz/fuel afterwards, so sims run offline from the second load; CI and fresh clones must account for the first-fetch network dependency (or use vendored mode).
• Gazebo-Classic-era worlds don't necessarily load in modern gz. Famous older worlds (e.g. the AWS RoboMaker set) predate modern gz; verify a world loads headless in the target gz version at adoption time rather than assuming; prefer the modern-gz picks in the catalog.
• Hub-hosted bags/MCAP have no Dataset Viewer preview. Arbitrary binaries are storable but not browsable on the Hub page; download-only. Ship a README next to them saying what the recording contains.
• Dataset slices must stay loadable. A naive partial download of a LeRobot dataset can leave metadata inconsistent with the reduced episode count; after slicing, confirm the slice actually opens (format details and tooling → lerobot) before committing it as a fixture.

Customization

• Different robot than the catalog picks: keep the matrix's shape (model + world + sim + dataset per robot type) and substitute your robot's description package; the layout, manifest, and sourcing funnel apply unchanged.
• Adding a vertical (drone, legged, ...): extend the suitability matrix with the same columns rather than inventing a new selection scheme; note gaps honestly (as the drone row does) instead of forcing a pick.
• Tighter or looser size budgets: the vendored-mode budget is a project decision; state it in the corpus README and let the vendor script's size summary enforce it socially; trim textures/meshes/episodes before busting it, and record trims in the manifest.

References

• references/canonical-assets.md: the verified catalog of worlds, robot models, datasets, and recordings with links, licenses, and citation lines.
• references/test-assets-layout.md: the standard test-assets folder format, MANIFEST.yaml schema, and slice conventions.
• scripts/vendor_assets.py: manifest-driven fetcher/refresher for both sourcing modes.
• examples/assets-manifest.yaml: the catalog shortlist as a working manifest (status: unverified until the first hardening run).
• Sibling skills: testing (pyramid + pass bars this data serves), data (training-data sourcing), simulation (simulator choice), gazebo / isaac-sim (asset loading mechanics), lerobot (LeRobotDataset format, slice validation), huggingface (hub transfer mechanics), architect (routes here when a build plans its testing).

Changelog

• 1.0.3 (2026-08-03): style pass; removed em dashes throughout (no content changes).
• 1.0.2 (2026-08-01): decision-table rows anchored (learning-engine Phase 1 follow-up); no content changes.
• 1.0.1 (2026-08-01): anchor IDs added to claim-bearing items (learning-engine Phase 1); no content changes.
• 1.0.0 (2026-07-18): initial authoring: robot-type suitability matrix, sourcing-mode funnel, layout reference, canonical-assets catalog, vendor script. Hardening pending: the robium-applications test-assets corpus build is this skill's first trial run.