Blue Core Software

This repository provides all of the mid-level software needed to run a Blue robot arm with ROS.

The stack is set up as a ROS metapackage, which organizes our codebase into the following packages:

• blue_bringup
  • Launch files, configurations, and scripts used to start up the robot
• blue_controller_manager
  • Higher level control code, built off the ros_control framework
  • Provides infrastructure for dynamically starting and stopping different types of controllers: end effector pose control, joint position control, velocity control, etc.
• blue_hardware_interface
  • Abstraction barrier between joint messages and actuator messages (see ros_control)
• blue_controllers
  • Source code for our custom controller plugins
• blue_hardware_drivers
  • Lower-level code for communicating with hardware (ie motor drivers) and providing a ROS interface to them
• blue_descriptions
  • Physical descriptions of our robot, in the form of URDF files and associated 3D models
• blue_msgs
  • Message types and service descriptions

---

How do I set up the computer to run my arm?

• Install Ubuntu 16.0.4

• Install ROS Kinetic

  • Start from 1.2 to 1.7, just copy paste into terminal
  • For step 1.4, use Desktop-Full if unsure

• Create a workspace:

  mkdir -p ~/blue_ws/src && cd "$_"

• Clone the code:

  git clone https://github.com/berkeleyopenarms/blue_core.git

• Install dependencies:

  cd ~/blue_ws
  rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y

• Build:

  catkin_make install

• Source:

  echo "source ~/blue_ws/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
  source ~/blue_ws/devel/setup.bash

• Setup user permissions (you'll need to log out and back in for this take effect):

  sudo addgroup $USER dialout

• Set up a configuration file (see the blue_configs repo for examples)

• Proceed to setup the arm with power supply and USB adapter ("Electrical Setup" in Quick Start Guide)

---

The robot is now turned on, connected via USB, and in the proper startup position -- how do I run the control stack?

After running the above setup steps, the following will boot the arm and put it into gravity compensation mode:

• For a right arm (default setup):

  roslaunch blue_bringup right.launch param_file:=blue_params.yaml

• For a left arm (yaml file will need to be namespaced relative to left_arm instead of right_arm):

  roslaunch blue_bringup left.launch param_file:=blue_params.yaml

---

Experimental two arm

• For the experimental two arm setup, the .yaml file should contain parameters for both the left and right arms:

  right_arm/blue_hardware:
        serial_port: /dev/serial/by-id/usb-FTDI_FT232R_USB_UART_A506MP4W-if00-port0
        motor_ids: [40, 76, 65, 70, 77, 20, 21, 52]
        simple_startup_angles: [-0.785398, -2.19, -1.570796, 0.0, 1.570796, -0.23, 0.0, 0.0]
  left_arm/blue_hardware:
        serial_port: /dev/serial/by-id/usb-FTDI_FT232R_USB_UART_AI057K87-if00-port0
        motor_ids: [30, 62, 69, 16, 33, 51, 50, 55]
        simple_startup_angles: [-0.785398, -2.19, -1.570796, 0.0, 1.570796, -0.23, 0.0, 0.0]
  

• To run:

  roslaunch blue_bringup full.launch param_file:=blue_params.yaml

---

rviz

roslaunch blue_bringup rviz.launch