remote_manipulation_markers

A set of interactive markers for various methods of remote teleoperation manipulation of 6-DOF robot end-effectors.

Quick Start Guide

This package comes with a demo for the Point-and-Click interaction mode, using RAIL packages for grasp calculation. Follow the following steps to run the demo.

1. Clone the following RAIL packages into a ROS catkin workspace :
   • remote_manipulation_markers (https://github.com/GT-RAIL/remote_manipulation_markers) - backend for the point-and-click interface
   • rail_agile (https://github.com/gt-rail/rail_agile) - grasp sampling
   • rail_grasp_calculation (https://github.com/GT-RAIL/rail_grasp_calculation) - grasp ranking
   • rail_manipulation_msgs (https://github.com/GT-RAIL/rail_manipulation_msgs) - supporting ROS message types
2. Build your ROS workspace
3. Launch a depth camera
   • The demo assumes an asus xtion camera, but can be adjusted with launch file parameters
   • Start the asus xtion with: $ roslaunch openni_launch openni.launch
4. Launch the point-and-click demo
   • The complete back-end for the demo can be started with the launch file: $ roslaunch remote_manipulation_markers point_and_click_demo.launch
   • The following parameters may be useful to adjust for your system:
     • If using a different depth camera, change cloud_topic to your camera's point cloud ROS topic
     • Grasp sampling parameters are configured for the Robotiq-85 2-finger gripper. If you're using a different gripper, adjust the parameters under <!-- gripper parameters for grasp sampling; note: defaults are measurements of the robotiq-85 gripper --> in the launch file. These parameters correspond to parameters of agile_grasp
     • Other grasp sampling behavior can be adjusted with the parameters under <!-- grasp sampling and ranking parameters -->, which correspond to parameters of the rail_grasp_calculation package
     • By default the demo assumes you're performing tabletop manipulation. If this is not true, set remove_table to false
5. Visualize the interface with rviz
   • Launch rviz: $ rosrun rviz rviz
   • Add the following display types to rviz
     • InteractiveMarkers, set Update Topic to /clickable_point_cloud/update. This will give you a point cloud to click as input to the Point-and-Click approach.
     • InteractiveMarkers, set Update Topic to /grasp_selector/update. This will display the grasp to execute.
     • (optional for debugging) PoseArray, set Topic to /point_and_click_demo/sampled_grasps. This will display poses for the full set of calculated grasps.
6. To calculate grasps in a local area, click once on a point in the point cloud. Grasp sampling ranking may take some time depending on the grasp parameters set in the launch file, but once finished a purple gripper marker will appear at the top ranked grasp.
7. To scroll through grasps, use the ROS service /point_and_click/cycle_grasps, callable from the command line with $ rosservice call /point_and_click/cycle_grasps "forward: true"
8. This demo does not assume a hardware or robot control implementation for grasp execution, but it does provide an actionlib interface. To execute a grasp, use the action client /point_and_click/execute_grasp, which assumes you have implemented the grasp execution action server for your hardware.

To create your own Point-and-Click interface, use the /clickable_point_cloud and /grasp_selector interactive marker servers, the /point_and_click/cycle_grasps service, and the /point_and_click/execute_grasp action client to your preferred visualization environment, such as rviz panels or Robot Web Tools visualizers.

Documentation

Full documentation is available on the ROS wiki here.