Ignition ros2 control

[ahcorde]

🎉 New feature

Summary

This PR includes two packages:

• ignition_ros2_control - A system plugin that allows to use ros2_control with Ignition Robotics
• ignition_ros2_control_demos - Some demos

Test it

Checklist

• Signed all commits for DCO
• Added tests
• Added example and/or tutorial
• Updated documentation (as needed)
• Updated migration guide (as needed)
• codecheck passed (See contributing)
• All tests passed (See test coverage)
• While waiting for a review on your PR, please help review another open pull request to support the maintainers

Note to maintainers: Remember to use Squash-Merge

[ahcorde]

I opened this PR for review.

There is on issue with the color. I checked the sdformat library ( version 11 ) is not parsing the color properly for Ignition. According the migration guide.

• URDF defined the color as rgba but in ignition the color is defined as ambient, specular and diffuse.
• The other way to use a color in the URDF format is with OGRE materials, but according with the migration guide there is no support for this.

None of this two methods are working.

With this patch in sdformat plain color are working:

diff --git a/src/parser_urdf.cc b/src/parser_urdf.cc
index 85eebbaa..02c1139d 100644
--- a/src/parser_urdf.cc
+++ b/src/parser_urdf.cc
@@ -3197,6 +3197,19 @@ void CreateVisual(tinyxml2::XMLElement *_elem, urdf::LinkConstSharedPtr _link,
     CreateGeometry(sdfVisual, _visual->geometry);
   }
 
+  if (_visual->material){
+    double color[4];
+    color[0] = _visual->material->color.r;
+    color[1] = _visual->material->color.g;
+    color[2] = _visual->material->color.b;
+    color[3] = _visual->material->color.a;
+    AddKeyValue(sdfVisual, "material", "");
+    auto materialTag = sdfVisual->FirstChildElement("material");
+    AddKeyValue(materialTag, "ambient", Values2str(4, color));
+    AddKeyValue(materialTag, "diffuse", Values2str(4, color));
+    AddKeyValue(materialTag, "specular", Values2str(4, color));
+  }
+
   // set additional data from extensions
   InsertSDFExtensionVisual(sdfVisual, _link->name);

[adlarkin]

GitHub actions is failing at the Setup colcon workspace step, does this need to be addressed?

Reading package lists...
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
Error: Process completed with exit code 100.

[adlarkin]

For now, I went through the README, so I'll have to review the code and other files next. My main question about the README is that there appear to be times where Gazebo classic is referenced (for example, using gzclient to run the Gazebo client), but I thought that this package should target ign-gazebo - so, should Gazebo classic be referenced at all here?

[adlarkin]

Should we add instructions for building a workspace with the demos first (including installing dependencies) before users try these commands?

[destogl]

This looks great for the first implementation. I added few comments which could also be addressed int the future. We should merge this soon to continue development for Galactic and Rolling.

P.S. Sorry that took me so long...

[destogl]

It seems to me that the following line is missing. Can this be? Or I am getting something wrong?

Suggested change

	this->dataPtr->controller_manager_->update();
	this->dataPtr->controller_manager_->update();
	this->dataPtr->controller_manager_->write();

We should execute updates something like ros2_control_node is doing. (check here)

[ahcorde]

thank you @destogl for your feedback! Just waiting the last review from @chapulina

[destogl]

Could we rather set a “prefix” which will be then used before both node names, plugin node and CM node? This is then also compatible with most robot descriptions, which have an option to set robot's prefix in multi robot systems.

The idea here is to enable to run multiple Plugins/CMs in Ignition and enable complex multi-robot simulations. What do you think?

[destogl]

As far as I understand, this plugin is loading controller manager and “whole” ros2_control framework. If this is correct, I propose to rename the library to simply "${PROJECT_NAME}". The name would be something similar to Gazebo library, i.e., "libgazebo_ros2_control.so"

[ahcorde]

Right now it's creating libignition_ros2_control-system.so. I added the postfix -system beacause it's the standard way to name them.

As you can see for example in the IMU: ignition-gazebo-imu-system

[chapulina]

I think it's about time this gets merged and we start reviewing some smaller PRs 😄 Things are looking good!

[chapulina]

I see the code supports more combinations now. Can we document them here?

[ahcorde]

Thank you all for the reviews!