CoSTAR

Collaborative System for Task Automation and Recognition

This is a project by a few members of the JHU Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, namely Chris Paxton, Kel Guerin, Andrew Hundt, and Felix Jonathan. Our goal is to build a system which facilitates end-user instruction of industrial robots to performa a variety of different tasks. CoSTAR allows users to program robots to perform complex tasks such as sorting, assembly, and more.

For more videos you can check out the CoSTAR YouTube Channel.

These are the tools and utilities we created to get the CoSTAR project up and off the ground. This document describes the CoSTAR project for an LBR iiwa 14 R820 with an attahed Robotiq 3-finger adaptive gripper.

To fully take advantage of these capabilities you will need:

• sp_segmenter: object detection and pose estimation library
• instructor: our custom user interface
• a KUKA LBR iiwa
• a Robotiq 3-finger gripper

Note that unfortunately the CoSTAR UI is not open source, so email me at cpaxton3@jhu.edu if you are interested in it.

Starting CoSTAR for the LBR iiwa with GRL

Making sure you are connected to the robot:

ping 192.170.10.2 # connection to FRI port for joint states
ping 172.31.1.146 # connection to Robotiq 3-finger gripper to send commands
ping 172.31.1.147 # connection to JAVA port on the robot to send commands

How to bring this robot up on our own platform:

# core features and UI
roslaunch costar_bringup iiwa14_s_model.launch
roslaunch instructor_core instructor.launch

# object detection and moveit planning scene
roslaunch sp_segmenter SPServerStructureAssembly.launch

You also need to launch the GRL KUKA ROS Driver. GRL is the Generic Robot Library, which provides a low-level control interface for the KUKA LBR.

In particular, costar_bringup will launch the robot command driver, the gripper command services, the MoveIt services, Predicator, and Librarian.

To bring up the tool attachments run:

roslaunch ready_air stomper_tool.launch

Starting CoSTAR in a Simulation

You can test CoSTAR in a simulation now. The basic launch procedure for a simulation is to run these commands:

roslaunch iiwa_gazebo iiwa_gazebo.launch trajectory:=false
roslaunch costar_bringup iiwa14_s_model.launch sim:=true start_sim:=false
roslaunch instructor_core instructor.launch

You can then use the Instructor UI to move the robot around in simulation. If you want to bring up Gazebo and all the drivers at once instead of separately, launch as:

roslaunch costar_bringup iiwa14_s_model.launch sim:=true start_sim:=true
roslaunch instructor_core instructor.launch

CoSTAR Packages

• Bringup: launch files, RVIZ configurations, et cetera
• Librarian: file management
• Predicator: robot knowledge management
• Gripper: utilities for integrating different grippers into UI
• Robot: utilities and services allowing high-level control of the robot and integrating these behaviors into the UI. Contains the CostarArm component.
• Tools: packages used for data collection, maintaining MoveIt planning scene, and other purposes

Other Requirements

• SP Segmenter

Proprietary Code

• Instructor: Behavior Tree-based user interface (built on Beetree)
• Ready Air: drives the current tool attachment and provides services

Due to licensing issues these cannot be made open source.

CoSTAR Tools

This section includes the code to manage the MoveIt collision detection and a few other utilities that provide useful services for creating powerful robot programs.

MoveIt collision detection: creates a PlanningScene based on detected objects, plus adds a table.

Run with:

roslaunch moveit_collision_environment colision_env.launch mesh_source:=$(find moveit_collision_environment)/data/mesh tableTFname:=ar_marker_2 defineParent:=true parentFrameName:=/world

Recording point clouds: this is used to collect data and scan objects. Run with:

rosrun point_cloud_recorder point_cloud_recorder.py _id:=$OBJECT_NAME _camera:=$CAMERA_ID

This will expose the /record_camera rosservice which can be called from a UI node. Files will be created wherever you ran the point cloud recorder.

Roslaunch would look something like:

<node name="point_cloud_recorder" pkg="point_cloud_recorder" type="point_cloud_recorder.py">
  <param name="id" value="NameOfMyObject"/>
  <param name="camera" value="kinect2"/>
</node>

Gripper

• Simple S Model Server: This is a part of our CoSTAR UI -- cross platform robot graphical user interface for teaching complex behaviors to industrial robots. This wraps a couple simple 3-finger gripper commands, which we can then expose as UI behaviors.=

Contact

CoSTAR is maintained by Chris Paxton (cpaxton3@jhu.edu)