PDG

In a scenario of human-robot interaction, data concerning three entities (humans, objects and robots) may come from various sensors with heterogeneous data-types. As we wish to keep the geometrical reasoning generic while having a flexible data-source system, we use a separate component PDG (Perceived Data Gathering) to collect the data from all the required sensors and publish them in a unique format usable by any other TOASTER component.

The current version already supports several inputs. For human tracking, TOASTER can get data from kinect-like and motion capture devices. Concerning objects, an object recognizer based on tags and stereo vision is supported. Finally, two different models of robots are directly functional in TOASTER. However the set of inputs is easily extensible by adding a new sensor data reader to the PDG module. Additionally, TOASTER can use HRI simulators. The robotic simulator MORSE and a built-in simulation component (toaster_simu) are supported as inputs for any type of entities (objects, humans or robots). These two simulators allow to quickly test TOASTER components and allow to have a partially simulated interaction. As an example, we can have a real human interacting with a simulated robot by using data obtained from a motion capture for the human in real world, and data from a simulator output for the robot pose.

To start the PDG ros node, run the following command on terminal -

rosrun pdg pdg

On running this node, one can access following services -

1. /pdg/manage_stream It enables to specify, at any moment, which sensors to use as raw input data. This makes the PDG component highly adaptable to the data needed for the current task and to the set of available sensors. Command to call this service

rosservice call /pdg/manage_stream (and press tab to see request parameters)

Set the parameters as per the sensors in use

rosservice call /pdg/manage_stream "{morseHuman: false, niutHuman: false, groupHuman: false, mocapHuman: false, adreamMocapHuman: false, toasterSimuHuman: false, pr2Robot: false, spencerRobot: false, toasterSimuRobot: false, toasterSimuObject: false}

2.** /pdg/get_loggers **