The ROS packages in this repository were created to provide an alternative Inverse Kinematics solver to the popular inverse Jacobian methods in KDL. Specifically, KDL's convergence algorithms are based on Newton's method, which does not work well in the presence of joint limits --- common for many robotic platforms. TRAC-IK concurrently runs two IK implementations. One is a simple extension to KDL's Newton-based convergence algorithm that detects and mitigates local minima due to joint limits by random jumps. The second is an SQP (Sequential Quadratic Programming) nonlinear optimization approach which uses quasi-Newton methods that better handle joint limits. By default, the IK search returns immediately when either of these algorithms converges to an answer. Secondary constraints of distance and manipulability are also provided in order to receive back the "best" IK solution.

###This repo contains 4 ROS packages:###

• trac_ik is a metapackage with build and complete Changelog info.

• trac_ik_examples contains examples on how to use the standalone TRAC-IK library.

• trac_ik_lib, the TRAC-IK kinematics code, builds a .so library that can be used as a drop in replacement for KDL's IK functions for KDL chains. Details for use are in trac_ik_lib/README.md.

• trac_ik_kinematics_plugin builds a MoveIt! plugin that can replace the default KDL plugin for MoveIt! with TRAC-IK for use in planning. Details for use are in trac_ik_kinematics_plugin/README.md. (Note prior to v1.1.2, the plugin was not thread safe.)

###As of v1.4.5, this package is part of the ROS Kinetic binaries: sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-trac-ik (or indigo or jade).

###A detailed writeup on TRAC-IK can be found here:###

Humanoids-2015 (reported results are from v1.0.0 of TRAC-IK, see below for newer results).

###Some sample results are below:

Orocos' KDL (inverse Jacobian w/ joint limits), KDL-RR (our fixes to KDL joint limit handling), and TRAC-IK (our concurrent inverse Jacobian and non-linear optimization solver; Speed mode) are compared below.

IK success and average speed (for successful solves) as of TRAC-IK tag v1.4.1. All results are from 10,000 randomly generated, reachable joint configurations. Full 3D pose IK was requested at 1e-5 Cartesian error for x,y,z,roll,pitch,yaw with a maximum solve time of 5 ms. All IK queries are seeded from the chain's "nominal" pose midway between joint limits.

Note on success: Neither KDL nor TRAC-IK uses any mesh information to determine if valid IK solutions result in self-collisions. IK solutions deal with link distances and joint ranges, and remain agnostic about self-collisions due to volumes. Expected future enhancements to TRAC-IK that search for multiple solutions may also include the ability to throw out solutions that result in self collisions (provided the URDF has valid geometry information); however, this is currently not the behaviour of any generic IK solver examined to date.

Note on timings: The timings provided include both successful and unsuccessful runs. When an IK solution is not found, the numerical IK solver implementations will run for the full timeout requested, searching for an answer; thus for robot chains where KDL fails much of the time (e.g., Jaco-2), the KDL times are skewed towards the user requested timeout value (here 5 ms).

Chain | DOFs | Orocos' KDL solve rate | Orocos' KDL Avg Time | KDL-RR solve rate | KDL-RR Avg Time | TRAC-IK solve rate | TRAC-IK Avg Time

• | - | - | - | - | - | - | - Atlas 2013 arm | 6 | 75.54% | 1.35ms | 97.13% | 0.39ms | 99.97% | 0.33ms Atlas 2015 arm | 7 | 75.71% | 1.50ms | 93.13% | 0.81ms | 99.18% | 0.48ms Baxter arm | 7 | 61.07% | 2.21ms | 89.52% | 1.02ms | 99.17% | 0.60ms Denso VS-068 | 6 | 27.92% | 3.69ms | 98.13% | 0.42ms | 99.78% | 0.38ms Fanuc M-430iA/2F | 5 | 21.07% | 3.99ms | 88.34% | 0.92ms | 99.16% | 0.58ms Fetch arm | 7 | 92.49% | 0.73ms | 93.82% | 0.72ms | 99.96% | 0.44ms Jaco2 | 6 | 26.23% | 3.79ms | 97.66% | 0.58ms | 99.51% | 0.58ms KUKA LBR iiwa 14 R820 | 7 | 37.71% | 3.37ms | 94.02% | 0.73ms | 99.63% | 0.56ms KUKA LWR 4+ | 7 | 67.80% | 1.88ms | 95.40% | 0.62ms | 99.95% | 0.38ms PR2 arm | 7 | 83.14% | 1.37ms | 86.96% | 1.27ms | 99.84% | 0.59ms NASA Robonaut2 'grasping leg' | 7 | 61.27% | 2.29ms | 87.57% | 1.10ms | 99.31% | 0.67ms NASA Robonaut2 'leg' + waist + arm | 15 | 97.99% | 0.80ms | 98.00% | 0.84ms | 99.86% | 0.79ms NASA Robonaut2 arm | 7 | 86.28% | 1.02ms | 94.26% | 0.73ms | 99.25% | 0.50ms NASA Robosimian arm | 7 | 61.74% | 2.44ms | 99.87% | 0.36ms | 99.93% | 0.44ms TRACLabs modular arm | 7 | 79.11% | 1.35ms | 95.12% | 0.63ms | 99.80% | 0.53ms UR10 | 6 | 36.16% | 3.29ms | 88.05% | 0.82ms | 99.47% | 0.49ms UR5 | 6 | 35.88% | 3.30ms | 88.69% | 0.78ms | 99.55% | 0.42ms NASA Valkyrie arm | 7 | 45.18% | 3.01ms | 90.05% | 1.29ms | 99.63% | 0.61ms

Feel free to email Patrick if there is a robot chain that you would like to see added above.

Primary Differences from upstream

This version of the TRAC-IK solver removes all sources from non-determinism from the original version. The primary sources of non-determinism included:

• The use of rand(), srand() for generating random numbers, which is often seeded by external modules using the current system time.

• The use of elapsed system time as the stopping criterion for the solver

• The use of multiple threads to parallelize the execution of each sub-solver

Invocations of rand() are replaced by instances of the pseudo-random number generators found in the header, using the default seed.

The elapsed-time stopping criterion is replaced by a fixed number of iterations, total for both solvers.

To retain some efficiency gained by thread parallelization, this solver explicitly interleaves the execution of the underlying iterative sub-solvers, and uses the result of the first successful solver.

Additionally, this version contains a couple other minor enhancements such as reduced unnecessary allocations.