IWB ROS PACKAGE

---

ros packages to support iwb robot modeling

📝 Contents

• About
• Getting Started
• Running the Tests
• Usage
• Development
• Built Using
• TODO
• Contributing
• Authors
• Acknowledgments

🧐 About

There are the ros packages for iwb milling robot simulation, relying on ROS Noetic distribution. The packages perform robot modeling, visualization, path planning, controlling, simulation with physic simulator, and many other functionalities.

You can simply run each package seperately with terminal command line, which helps you to get to know how it works. Besides, with IWB_ROBOT class in iwb_ros python package, you can also run these ros functionalites in a few python lines and make them cooperate with you own program.

🏁 Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and enable it to run with your local machine for development and testing purposes. See development for notes for developers.

The contents you need to walk through are:

• System Environment
• Prerequisites
  • ROS Noetic
  • Moveit!
  • Others
• Installation

System Environment

The packages work with ROS Noetic, which is primarily targeted at:

• Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS

Other systems are supported to varying degrees. (--- ROS Noetics)

Besides, if you are running everything with a virtual machine, the following configurations are recommended:

• 30 GB storage.
• TODO...

You can follow the Tutorial Here to setup a virtual machine.

Prerequisites

Install ROS Noetic

The packages are based on ROS Noetic distribution. You may install the desktop version of ROS Noetic Here. Please choose Desktop-Full install, which is also recommanded on that page. The installation may take 15 minutes or longer, according to your network connection.

After installation, every time you want to run the packages with terminal, use the following command to setup the ROS environment.

source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

if you want to source a different version of ROS, this line would be:

source /opt/ros/ROS-DISTRO/setup.bash
# for example ROS 2 foxy:
source /opt/ros/foxy/setup.bash

You may have noticed that it's possible to avoid doing this every time opening a terminal by adding this line into your system "~/.bashrc". If you do so, please check if you append the line for the ROS version that of your use. (Remember this when transplant the project to a new ROS version, for example ROS 2 foxy)

Don't forget to try the turtle example provided in ROS tutorial to validate your installation.

Install Moveit

The path & motion planning parts of the packages are realized by Moveit, which is the most widely used for robot manipulation. And it cooperates well with ROS.

You can install moveit ROS (binary) packages by execute the following line in your terminal:

# here for ros noetic
sudo apt install ros-noetic-moveit 

tips: You could always install missing ros packages using command line like:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ros-ROS_DISTRO-ros_package_name
# for example
sudo apt install ros-noetic-ros-control

The Moveit Tutorial can help you to understand its planning functionalities. The Python interfaces of Moveit are explained Here, which is quite helpful. And the process to set up a robot configuration for Moveit is shown Here.

Besides, for transplanting project to ROS 2, you may need Moveit2 instead of Moveit.

Others

TODO

Installing

After fulfilling the prerequisites, you can now install the packages to your device.

Open a terminal (ctrl+alt+T) and run the lines below to make new directory for the project.

cd
mkdir -p sa_ws/src
cd sa_ws/src

Then run git command to clone the packages into your new directory (You may need permission for that, e.g. ask the owner to add you as a maintainer.):

# Do not ignore the point "." at last!
git clone https://gitlab.lrz.de/00000000014A6C01/sa_bblab.git .

Now check the packages you cloned. You should build the packages first before using:

tips: Do not forget to source your ROS setup before using any functionality of ROS (especially when build a ROS package).

source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash
cd ~/sa_ws
catkin_make

Here the build tool catkin is used, which should be installed within ROS Noetic. Install it manually if it's not so.

If no error message appear, the installation is then successful. You should also run some test command in terminal to validate the installation.

🔧 Running the tests

There are some test commands to be ran for testing the installation and functionalies of our packages. Firstly, the visualization of the robot, and secondly, a "fake control" to move the robot link.

The command below depends on rivz, which should be included in ROS installation. Set it manually if some errors appear.

Open a new terminal and run the commands below:

# remember to source the ROS setup first
source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash
# then source the setup of our packages
source ~/sa_ws/devel/setup.bash
# to visualize the robot with rivz
roslaunch robot_model view_robot.launch

This should open rivz and you may see our milling robot in it like this:

Close it with keyboard interruption (ctrl+c) in the same terminal. Then run another command:

roslaunch robot_model robot_visualization_setup_v2.launch

The rviz should be opened again and your are able to see the last link rotating around a horizonal axis. Stop and close everything if no error appears.

tips: You should stop the process first (ctrl+c) and then close the terminal. That guarantees the roscore and master are not alive any more, otherwise this may cause some bugs when developing programs. When programming in python, use rospy or other API to achieve it.

The test part ends here.

🎈 Usage

These instructions help you with using the packages. Some examples are shown here to explain how to launch the program with terminal line. If you want to make these packages cooperate with corresponding IWB's python package, you may check the tutorial of the python package [Here](TODO: link of the toturial).

Before your hands-on practice, it would be great if you know about the basic bash line command of linux (Ubuntu). You can follow some tutorials like Here to learn about that.

Besides, the basic of ROS terminal command is also necessary for that. ROS has official tutorial for beginners and you can find that Here. For beginners it's enough to know the terminal commands, but you may still need to go through all of them if you are a developer.

🚀 Development

TODO structure of the project

Help to improve this tutorial

The Gitlab Markdown could be found Here.

⛏️ Built Using

• ROS Noeitcs - Robot operation system
• Moveit - Motion planning tool
• Pykdl - Robot kinematics
• Pykdl Utils - User interfaces of Pykdl

✍️ Authors

• @BBlab - Student in mechanical engineering
• And ... more contributers in the future.

🎉 Acknowledgements

• TODO: citing and inspiration mabe
• Thanks for your contribution to the project!
• ...