Platonics Equipment

• Franka Emika Panda robot aka Aristotle
• The Franka Hand with two-finger gripper
• Intel NUC kit NUC10i7FNHN2
• Intel Realsense Camera D405
• Camera mount. Download STL
• Gripper inlet. Download STL

Software Overview

Our solution to is made fully open-source to allow the community to build on top and further improve our solution. Most components are stored at Platonics Delft. You can find all required software components and links to their installation guides below. The first repo is the controller. Follow its instructions to install it on the host computer. The remaining packages must be cloned into the catkin workspace on the computer that is connected to the camera and to the robot by an Ethernet connection.

1. Franka Human Friendly Controllers
2. Platonics Robot Teaching
3. Panda Utils
4. Platonics Vision
5. Platonics Dataset
6. Platonics GUI
7. Platonics Tools

Installation

Follow the instructions here to install the controller on the computer directly connected to the robot: Franka Human Friendly Controllers

Then, make another workspace on the computer connected to the camera and also to the robot through ethernet and clone the rest of the repositories.

For example, for Panda Utils package:

cd robot_ws
mkdir src
cd src
git clone https://github.com/platonics-delft/panda-ros-py.git
cd src
pip install -r requirements.txt
cd ../..
catkin build
source devel/setup.bash

Similarly, clone this same repository also into your workspace.

Follow the instructions to install the vision packages on Platonics Vision, which includes the installation of the realsense camera ROS packages.

Follow the instructions to install the GUI packages on Platonics GUI.

The rest of the repos simply need to be cloned (platonics_tools and platonics_dataset) in the same workspace.

And finally, the instructions on Platonics GUI indicate how to launch everything with a few simple commands.

Please remember to source the workspace in every terminal you open.

Dependencies

Note that our packages have requirements.txt files when applicable for Python packages, so that pip can be used to install all dependecies. Similarly the ROS packages also have their dependencies in their CMakeLists.txt and package.xml files so 'rosdep' can be used.

Nonetheless here we list our Python dependencies:

• Numpy and Numpy-quaternion
• OpenCV
• Pynput
• Spatial math
• Robotics toolbox
• Panda-py
• PyYAML

Execution data from trials

Our execution data as well as recorded demonstrations can be found in the Platonics Dataset repository.

Recording

During recording of demonstraions you can give certain flags to the robot by using the buttons on the robot. The flags are:

• 'Up': Pause
• 'Down': Spiraling
• 'Right': Offset compenestation
• 'Checkmark': Camera Feedback
• 'Cross': Stop recording
• 'Circle': Gripper Toggle

(Optionally, without the GUI) Run only the services included in this repository

Ensure that the franka human friendly variable cartesian impedance controller is running.

Run the learning from demonstration services

rosrun skills_manager lfd_servers

Then, 4 services become available:

• \lfdHome: Homing the robot
• \lfdRecord: Record a skill given a template
• \lfdExecuteSequence: Execute a sequence of recordings
• \lfdExecuteSkill: Execute a skill which can contain multiple sequences or other skills