MujocoTactileSensorPlugin

Plugin to simulate tactile sensors in MuJoCo

MujocoTactileSensorPlugin-20230605-compressed.mp4

Features

• Since it is in plugin style, you can use it without rebuilding MuJoCo from the source.
• Plane and cylinder surfaces are supported as sensor mounting surfaces.
• Square and hexagonal grids are supported as sensor arrays.
• It supports both building with cmake as a standalone project and building with catkin as a ROS package.
• If built as a ROS package, sensor information and visualization markers are published as ROS topics.

Install

Requirements

• Compiler supporting C++17
• Tested on Ubuntu 20.04 / ROS Noetic

Dependencies

• MuJoCo (>= 2.3.5)

Installation procedure as a standalone project

$ mkdir ${HOME}/src && cd ${HOME}/src
$ git clone git@github.com:isri-aist/MujocoTactileSensorPlugin.git --recursive
$ cd MujocoTactileSensorPlugin
$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -DMUJOCO_ROOT_DIR=<absolute path to MuJoCo>
$ make
$ make install

<absolute path to MuJoCo> is the path to the root directory of MuJoCo. For example, ${HOME}/.mujoco/mujoco-2.3.5 if you installed MuJoCo from release, or ${HOME}/src/mujoco if you installed it from source.

Installation procedure as a ROS package

# Setup catkin workspace.
$ mkdir -p ${HOME}/ros/ws_mujoco/src
$ cd ${HOME}/ros/ws_mujoco
$ wstool init src
$ wstool set -t src isri-aist/MujocoTactileSensorPlugin git@github.com:isri-aist/MujocoTactileSensorPlugin.git --git -y
$ wstool update -t src
# Install dependent packages.
$ source /opt/ros/${ROS_DISTRO}/setup.bash
$ rosdep install -y -r --from-paths src --ignore-src
# Build a package.
$ catkin init
$ catkin config --extend /opt/ros/${ROS_DISTRO}
$ catkin build mujoco_tactile_sensor_plugin -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -DMUJOCO_ROOT_DIR=<absolute path to MuJoCo>

Add source ${HOME}/ros/ws_mujoco/devel/setup.bash to ${HOME}/.bashrc.

Examples

Example as a standalone project

Assume that MuJoCo is installed in ${HOME}/.mujoco/mujoco-2.3.5 from release, and MuJocoTactileSensorPlugin is cloned under ${HOME}/src/.

$ cp ${HOME}/src/MujocoTactileSensorPlugin/build/src/libTactileSensorPlugin.so ${HOME}/.mujoco/mujoco-2.3.5/bin/mujoco_plugin
$ cd ${HOME}/.mujoco/mujoco-2.3.5/bin
$ ./simulate ${HOME}/src/MujocoTactileSensorPlugin/xml/sample_tactile_sensor.xml

Example as a ROS package

Assume that MuJoCo is installed in ${HOME}/.mujoco/mujoco-2.3.5 from release, and the path to the catkin workspace is ${HOME}/ros/ws_mujoco.

# Terminal 1
$ cp ${HOME}/ros/ws_mujoco/devel/lib/libTactileSensorPlugin.so ${HOME}/.mujoco/mujoco-2.3.5/bin/mujoco_plugin
$ cd ${HOME}/.mujoco/mujoco-2.3.5/bin
$ ./simulate `rospack find mujoco_tactile_sensor_plugin`/xml/sample_tactile_sensor_ros.xml
# Terminal 2
$ roslaunch mujoco_tactile_sensor_plugin display.launch

Plugins

MujocoTactileSensorPlugin

This is a ROS-independent plugin to simulate tactile sensors.

The following attributes are required.

• sensor_nums: Number of sensors in each of the X and Y directions in a 2D array
• sensor_interval: Interval between adjacent sensors [m]
• surface_radius: Radius of the sensor mounting surface (zero for plane, positive for cylinder)
• is_hex_grid: Whether the sensor grid is square or hexagonal (true for hexagonal, false for square)

An example of tags to be added to the MJCF file:

<extension>
  <plugin plugin="MujocoTactileSensorPlugin"/>
</extension>
<sensor>
  <plugin name="tactile_sensor" plugin="MujocoTactileSensorPlugin" objtype="site" objname="[site name]">
    <config key="sensor_nums" value="20 20"/>
    <config key="sensor_interval" value="0.02"/>
    <config key="surface_radius" value="0.5"/>
    <config key="is_hex_grid" value="true"/>
  </plugin>
</sensor>

MujocoTactileSensorRosPlugin

This is a plugin with ROS interface to simulate tactile sensors. This is only available when built as a ROS package.

In addition to the attributes of MujocoTactileSensorPlugin, the following attributes are required.

• frame_id: Frame ID of ROS topic (Site name is used if omitted)
• topic_name: ROS topic name of sensor data
• publish_rate: Period to publish the topic of sensor data [Hz]

An example of tags to be added to the MJCF file:

<extension>
  <plugin plugin="MujocoTactileSensorRosPlugin"/>
</extension>
<sensor>
  <plugin name="tactile_sensor" plugin="MujocoTactileSensorRosPlugin" objtype="site" objname="[site name]">
    <config key="sensor_nums" value="20 20"/>
    <config key="sensor_interval" value="0.02"/>
    <config key="surface_radius" value="0.5"/>
    <config key="is_hex_grid" value="true"/>
    <config key="topic_name" value="/mujoco/tactile_sensor"/>
    <config key="publish_rate" value="10"/>
  </plugin>
</sensor>