HIRO ROS Arm Controller

Documentation Link: http://hiro-group.ronc.one/hiro_ros_arm_controller/

A high level API (in the form of a ROS package) for controlling robotic arms in ROS. It works for both simulation and real robots, but has been primarily tested on the Franka Panda.

Supported Robotic Arms

• Franka Emika Panda (recommended)
• Rethink Robotics Sawyer

Quick Installation

Assuming that you already have a catkin workspace:

mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd src
git clone https://github.com:HIRO-group/hiro_ros_arm_controller
cd hiro_ros_arm_controller
# runs the install script
./install.sh
cd ../..
catkin build   # or catkin_make

Detailed Installation

We have an install.sh script that will install the following packages:

• Installs this package

• The Franka Panda Gazebo Simulator package here

• External dependencies needed for the panda_simulation package

• The Sawyer Gazebo simulator

To run install.sh

Make sure that you have cloned this repository from the src folder of a catkin workspace (eg: from catkin_ws/src). If you haven't, the script will give an error, and it won't build the whole workspace.

Additionally, you should clone this repository in an empty catkin workspace. For example, if you have the franka_ros package in the workspace, it will be deleted in favor of our forked version that works with this package.

Usage:

./install.sh --git-option https|ssh --franka-build apt|source

Examples

1. Simply Run (Default options= ssh && apt)

./install.sh

2. Use options

./install.sh --git-option ssh --franka-build source

This command will build libfranka from source and use ssh for git.

Options

• --git-option
  specifies if we clone the HIRO repos via https or ssh.

• --franka_build
  specifies whether we want to build libfranka from source or install it via apt.

API

In any of your ros packages, simply import our package.

Joint Position Control Example (in real life)

from hiro_ros_arm_controller.RobotController import PandaController

if __name__ == '__main__':
    rospy.init_node('robot_controller', anonymous=True)
    controller = PandaController(is_sim=False)

    controller.publish_positions([0, 0, 0, -0.0698, 0, 0, 0])

This example creates a ROS node, creates a PandaController with is_sim set to False (so, real robot control), and publishes a list of desired joint positions to follow.