This metapackage is intended for controlling and simulating the PhantomX Pincher robot at the RST.
Build status of the master branch (ROS Indigo):
Build status of the devel branch (ROS Indigo):
First, make sure that ROS is installed properly (we are currently on ROS indigo). This package utilizes ros_control for controlling the robot:
sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-ros-control ros-indigo-ros-controllers
Now it is time to checkout this package:
cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/rst-tu-dortmund/pxpincher_ros.git
Check if everything compiles:
cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make
If you have unmet dependencies, try to install them using rosdep:
cd ~/catkin_ws
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro indigo -y
The pxpincher_hardware and the communication interface pxpincher_comm provide a joint trajectory action server that can be utilized to control the PhantomX Pincher robot arm. In case of dry experiments, a simulation mode is implemented in order to mimic the actual joint motions.
If you want to control the real robot:
roslaunch pxpincher_launch pxp.launch
In case of a simulation launch:
roslaunch pxpincher_launch pxp_sim.launch
Issues:
-
Set permissions of the usb/serial port (only required if the unix user is not part of the system group dialout):
sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyUSB0
Run
roslaunch pxpincher_launch pxp_rviz.launch
After starting the pxpincher hardware node (see Hardware Bringup), the robot can be controlled using any suited action client. However, you can utilize our C++ library to control the robot. Internally, the library implements an action client but provides many functionalities including joint control, task space control, kinematics, etc.
Just add pxpincher_lib as build dependency to your node.
See an example usage in pxpincher_lib/src/main.cpp:
rosrun pxpincher_lib pxpincher_test
The pxpincher_lib also provides a teaching node that can be used to print and modify joint configurations in RVIZ. Additionally, joints of the actual robot can be relaxed in order to guide the robot towards a desired joint configuration manually.
Make sure that the pxpincher_hardware node is running (see Hardware Bringup) and start:
rosrun pxpincher_lib teach
The pxpincher_ros meta-package is mainly developed and composed for educational purposes.
The individual packages (as part of the meta-package) are licensed under the BSD license. The packages depend on other ROS packages, which are listed in the package.xml and that are also BSD licensed, and the following third-party packages:
- Eigen, MPL2 license, http://eigen.tuxfamily.org
- CerealPort by Gonçalo Cabrita and Pedro Sousa, BSD license, http://wiki.ros.org/cereal_port, (here inlcuded in pxpincher_comm)
In order to simplify the configuration process, especially for educational purposes, some modified versions of the turtlebot_arm packages (https://github.com/corot/turtlebot_arm, https://github.com/turtlebot/turtlebot_arm) are included, modified and renamed (pxpincher_description).
All packages included are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the licenses for more details.
In visualization, the separation of both fingers of the gripper is just a linear approximation of the actual euclidean distance. However, this is ok for our purposes right now.
Note, this package includes an (slighly) adopted version of the turtlebot_arm package (resp. the branch https://github.com/corot/turtlebot_arm.git). It is copied into this metapackage in order to allow a simple integration for students that start working with the PhantomX.