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Baxter SSH - Run Inside Baxter

A C++ version of the Baxter SDK that works along side the Rethink SDK. This is the base package that contains a ros_control implementation of the Baxter controllers, and it is intended to run on Baxter itself

Features

• Baxter ros_control position, velocity, or torque trajectory controllers
  • Uses the ros_control joint_trajectory_controller instead of the python trajectory controller that comes with the SDK

Prerequisites

• A Baxter with dual parallel electric grippers with SDK v1.0.0 installed

Installation

• Two options of where to setup baxter_cpp

  • Option 1: SSH into Baxter

    • See http://sdk.rethinkrobotics.com/wiki/SSH

    • Install other software tools if desired - see section "Installing Other Software on Baxter"

    • Install missing depenencies for Groovy (this is only if running on Baxter itself)

      • xacro
      • cmake_modules -b master
      • control_toolbox -b indigo-devel
      • realtime_tools -b indigo-devel
      • control_msgs -b indigo-devel
      • wstool

  • Option 2: Install on developer machine

    Just continue on...

• Create a catkin workspace if you don't already have one (we recommend a separate one for Baxter)

  mkdir -p ~/ros/ws_baxter/src
  cd ~/ros/ws_baxter/src
  wstool init .
  

• Install these baxter_ssh packages: Note: replaces Rethink's baxter_common with a version that has parallel electric end effectors modeled

  wstool merge --merge-replace -y https://raw.github.com/davetcoleman/baxter_ssh/indigo-devel/baxter_ssh/baxter_ssh.rosinstall
  

• Download the Baxter packages:

  wstool update
  

• Build

  cd ..
  catkin_make
  

Bringup Baxter

Enable controllers

• Power on baxter and SSH in

• Bringup ros_control controllers - starts a position-based trajectory controller. See Hardware Control Modes for other control modes

  roslaunch baxter_control baxter_hardware.launch
  

Hardware Control Modes

This Baxter repository uses ros_control to send trajectories to Baxter via the joint_trajectory_controller. Trajectories can be executed on Baxter in either position mode or velocity mode. You can easily switch between the two - both are loaded at startup but position is started by default:

• Position Control

  Load the position controllers (not loaded by default)

  rosrun controller_manager spawner --stopped position_joint_mode_controller left_position_trajectory_controller right_position_trajectory_controller --namespace /robot &
  

  Start the position controllers and stop the velocity controllers

  rosservice call /robot/controller_manager/switch_controller "{start_controllers: ['position_joint_mode_controller','left_position_trajectory_controller','right_position_trajectory_controller'], stop_controllers: ['velocity_joint_mode_controller','left_velocity_trajectory_controller','right_velocity_trajectory_controller'], strictness: 2}"
  

  Plot position error of position-based trajectory controller

  roslaunch baxter_control joint_position_left_trajectory_controller.launch
  roslaunch baxter_control joint_position_right_trajectory_controller.launch
  

• Velocity Control

  rosservice call /robot/controller_manager/switch_controller "{start_controllers: ['velocity_joint_mode_controller','left_velocity_trajectory_controller','right_velocity_trajectory_controller'], stop_controllers: ['position_joint_mode_controller','left_position_trajectory_controller','right_position_trajectory_controller'], strictness: 2}"
  

  Plot position error of velocity-based trajectory controller

  roslaunch baxter_control joint_velocity_left_trajectory_controller.launch
  roslaunch baxter_control joint_velocity_right_trajectory_controller.launch
  

• Torque Control

  TODO

Programmed Buttons

End Effector Cuff

• Rectangular button: close end effector
• Circular button: open end effector

Back of Robot Shoulders

• Left shoulder button: enable Baxter
• Right shoulder button: disable Baxter

Installing Other Software on Baxter

Some helpful notes for setting up your Baxter to be more useful. Its suggested you place all software in a folder software

cd ~
mkdir software

Install emacs

wget SOME-MIRROR/emacs-24.3.tar.xz
tar xvfJ emacs-24.3.tar.xz
cd emacs-24.3
./configure --with-gif=no
make

Add to PATH:

export PATH=$PATH:/home/ruser/software/emacs-24.3/lib-src/
export PATH=$PATH:/home/ruser/software/emacs-24.3/src/

Install colordiff

wget http://www.colordiff.org/colordiff-1.0.13.tar.gz
tar xvfz colordiff-1.0.13.tar.gz
cd colordiff-1.0.13
mkdir ~/bin ~/man ~/etc

Edit Makefile to say first three lines:

 INSTALL_DIR=~/bin
 MAN_DIR=~/man/man1
 ETC_DIR=~/etc

Install - The script will complain about changing ownership of colordiffrc - ignore the error.

 make install

Add to PATH in .bashrc

 export PATH=$PATH:/home/ruser/bin

Install catkin_tools

First edit your .bashrc and add:

 export PYTHONPATH="/home/ruser/bin/catkin_tools/lib/python2.7/site-packages:$PYTHONPATH"

Source your .bashrc then

 cd ~/ros
 git clone https://github.com/catkin/catkin_tools.git
 cd catkin_tools/
 python setup.py install --prefix ~/bin/catkin_tools

License

BSD (New BSD License)

Contributors

Please help - see Contribute page.