Alan

Alan is a mobile manipulator composted of a Summit XL Steel base and a Franka Panda arm.

This project uses the ROS this two packages for simulation:

• https://github.com/erdalpekel/panda_simulation
• https://github.com/RobotnikAutomation/summit_xl_sim

The installation procedure of all the packages required follows.

Installation

Before downloading the following ROS packages, it is important that you build the libfranka library from source and pass its directory to catkin_make when building the ROS packages as described in this tutorial.

mkdir -p catkin_ws/src
cd catkin_ws/src

git clone https://github.com/erdalpekel/panda_simulation.git
git clone https://github.com/erdalpekel/panda_moveit_config.git
git clone --branch simulation https://github.com/erdalpekel/franka_ros.git

git clone https://github.com/RobotnikAutomation/summit_xl_common.git
git clone https://github.com/RobotnikAutomation/robotnik_msgs.git
git clone https://github.com/RobotnikAutomation/robotnik_sensors.git
git clone https://github.com/RobotnikAutomation/summit_xl_sim.git

git clone https://github.com/JenniferBuehler/gazebo-pkgs.git
git clone https://github.com/JenniferBuehler/general-message-pkgs.git

git clone https://github.com/CentroEPiaggio/Alan.git

cd ..
sudo apt-get install libboost-filesystem-dev
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -y --skip-keys libfranka

catkin_make -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DFranka_DIR:PATH=/opt/ros/kinetic/lib/libfranka/

The software has been tested using the following versions of the packages:

robotnik_msgs - commit: cdc594d498bcb484c2847d20397bd4d0a294fc33
robotnik_sensors - commit: 681482b384f9d5aa8bca1a355f376b0e9270119b
summit_xl_common - commit: 725f7f127d549a9ed64fa7d829b74628ad0a1040
summit_xl_sim - commit: 9cf27eed144d7be9c3cf21ab529c5046644ccde6
panda_simulation - commit: 9b53b0efc4bbdbf21d6d3c250dd06d495e2aae9f
panda_moveit_config - commit: a145fc96ff906f03c5bf818b32108d0422c2cf3c
franka_ros - commit: 45df2e90fe9e49162397774080284cf6d4c23abd
gazebo-pkgs - commit: baf0f033475c3a592efb0862079f3ff8392cadf6
general-message-pkgs - commit: f0c7a0cc811187cca8e928bc7c5906e463c24945

To change the version of a package, run:

cd <package folder>
git checkout <commit hash>

For example, to change the version of the summit_xl_common package run:

cd summit_xl_common
git checkout 725f7f127d549a9ed64fa7d829b74628ad0a1040

Running Alan on Gazebo

source devel/setup.bash
roslaunch alan sim.launch

Example Tasks

1 - End Effector position control

Launch Gazebo by running:

source devel/setup.bash
roslaunch alan sim.launch

In a separate terminal run:

roslaunch alan ee_pose_control.launch ee_x:=1.0 ee_y:=1.0 ee_z:=0.7

where [ee_x, ee_y, ee_z] is the desired end-effector position.

2 - Pick and Place of an object

Launch Gazebo by running:

source devel/setup.bash
roslaunch alan sim.launch

In a separate terminal run:

roslaunch alan move_pick_place.launch

The launch file has the following arguments:

• base_x: Desired position of the Summit base - X coordinate [default 0.4]
• base_y: Desired position of the Summit base - Y coordinate [default 0]
• base_theta: Desired yaw of the Summit base [default 0.0]
• table_x: Position of the table - X coordinate [default 1.0]
• table_y: Position of the table - Y coordinate [default 0.0]
• table_theta: Yaw of the table [default 0]
• object_x: Position of the object - X coordinate [default 1.0]
• object_y: Position of the object - Y coordinate [default 0.0]
• object_theta: Yaw of the object [default 0]