rai-robotModels

This repo contains some robot models that can be loaded by the rai code.

Exploring models with kinEdit

In the rai repo, call make bin. This should compile the rai/bin/src_kinEdit. I'll also assume that you added the rai/bin path to PATH, e.g.:

export PATH="$HOME/git/rai/bin:$PATH"

Then, in rai-robotModels try calling

kinEdit baxter/baxter.g
kinEdit pr2/pr2.g
kinEdit panda/panda.g
kinEdit kuka_drake/kuka.g

If you want to see the bremenKitchen as well

make -C bremenKitchen  # to download the mesh binaries not included in this repo
kinEdit bremenKitchen/bremenKitchen.g

Editing models

Please read (this documentation)[https://github.com/MarcToussaint/rai-maintenance/blob/master/help/kinEdit.md]

Importing from URDF

The conversion is not fully automatic! It requires some tinkering. The best is to follow the HOWTO.sh example in panda:

Cleaning meshes

Using meshlabserver is really convenient. In panda/meshes/visual there is a HOWTO.sh script that cleans and simplifies all original meshes using the script.mlx. That way we have nice ply meshes for all objects.

Converting the URDF

The panda/HOWTO.sh reads

urdf2rai.py panda_arm_hand.urdf > z.1.g
sed 's/package:\/\/franka_description\/meshes/meshes/g' z.1.g > z.2.g
sed 's/\.dae/.ply/g' z.2.g > z.3.g

# FIX the axis = [0 0 0] but by hand!!

kinEdit -file z.3.g -cleanOnly
mv z.g z.panda.g

The first line converts the urdf (xml) to a basic g-file. The second line strips package://franka_description/ from the mesh path names. The third renames mesh files to .ply. Then you need to edit z.3.g by hand to fix the [0 0 0] axis, which generates a NAN in my code. Then you can load it by kinEdit and inspect it. kinEdit also outputs a z.g, which should then be ready to be used (and equivalent to panda_clean.g). I typically do some editional edits by hand, also by including it in a wapping file (panda.g) which sets a different initial joint configuration.