BionicSoftHand ROS Libraries

The BionicSoftHand is a pneumatic gripper with 12 independent controllable chambers.

⚠️ If you open the case of the BionicSoftHand there is the possibility that you get in touch with the 300V piezo electronics! Avoid touching anything inside the case!

⚠️ The BionicSoftHand 2.0 works best with a pressure of 5.5 bars (650000 Pa)! If you go higher the hand can be damaged!

⚠️ The BionicSoftHand 2.0 is a prototype and not a series product.

These libraries use the bionic python libraries as the core and provide the ROS functionalities on top. It provides services and topics to interact with the BionicSoftHand.

There are some helper scripts here to setup your environment.

The ROS package uses the bionic_python_libs which provide the core functionality to communicate with the BionicSoftHand. These packages have to be installed on your system.

• Download or clone the necessary repositories
  • PID Control
  • DHCP
  • Bionic Message Tools
  • BionicSoftHand Python Libraries
• And install one by one on your computer. To do this change into the root directory of each cloned repository and enter the following command. This executes the setup.py file and installes the libraries locally on your computer. The point in the end means to use the current directory.
  • pip3 install .
• The bionic_python_libs libraries require python3. The default python for ROS up to melodic is python2. To make ROS work with python3 you have to install the following packages:
  • sudo apt-get install python3-pip python3-yaml python-catkin-tools python3-dev python3-numpy
  • sudo pip3 install rospkg catkin_pkg
• Create a new ROS workspace (http://wiki.ros.org/catkin/Tutorials/create_a_workspace)
• Clone this repository into the src folder of the created workspace
• Build the workspace

Linux: If you also need to setup a ROS environment, look into this repository for installation scripts. If you just want to install the ROS workspace for the BionicSoftHand, execute the following line from a terminal:

bash <(wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Schwimo/linux_config/master/scripts/setup_phand.bash)

Checkout the phand-python-libs readme to see how the hardware is working.

When the catkin build completed withour errors, the next steps show the usage.

To start the hardware interface execute the launch file.

roslaunch festo_phand_driver hardware_interface.launch

There is a debug user interface available which is automatically launched when you start the hardware_interface.launch file. To open it, start a browser of your choice and type in the IP-Address of this ROS machine with the port 7954.

localhost:7954

The hand publishes the following topics:

festo/phand/state

With the current state of the hand and internal sensors

Each connected "external" sensor is published on its own topic:

festo/phand/connected_sensors/%sensor_name%

The hand subscribes to the following topic:

In the default setup the hand is in the pressure control mode. To move the fingers, send a message to this topic.

festo/phand/set_pressures

To set the pressures in the fingers or the wrist publish the corresponding SimpleFluidPressures message to the topic. The pressure should be between 100000 (Pa) and 600000 (Pa).

festo/phand/set_valve_setpoints

To set the valves publish the corresponding ValveSetPoints message to the topic. The values should be between 0.0 and 1.0. 0 Meaning 0V for the piezo valve and 1.0 meaning 300V for the piezo valve.

The following services are offered by the hardware interface:

/festo/phand/close

To close the hand

/festo/phand/open

To open the hand

/festo/phand/set_configuration

To change the configuration of the hand

The Festo BionicSoftHand ROS libraries are published under the GNU GPL v3.0 License.