This metapackage is intended for controlling and simulating the PhantomX Pincher robot at the RST.

First, make sure that ROS is installed properly (we are currently on ROS kinetic). This package utilizes ros_control for controlling the robot:

sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-ros-control ros-kinetic-ros-controllers

Now it is time to checkout this package:

cd ~/catkin_ws/src    
git clone https://github.com/rst-tu-dortmund/pxpincher_ros

Check if everything compiles:

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make

If you have unmet dependencies, try to install them using rosdep:

 cd ~/catkin_ws
 rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro kinetic -y

The pxpincher_hardware and the communication interface pxpincher_comm provide a joint trajectory action server that can be utilized to control the PhantomX Pincher robot arm. In case of dry experiments, a simulation mode is implemented in order to mimic the actual joint motions.

If you want to control the real robot:

roslaunch pxpincher_launch pxp.launch

In case of a simulation launch:

roslaunch pxpincher_launch pxp_sim.launch

Issues:

• Set permissions of the usb/serial port (only required if the unix user is not part of the system group dialout):

    sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyUSB0
  

Run

roslaunch pxpincher_launch pxp_rviz.launch

After starting the pxpincher hardware node (see Hardware Bringup), the robot can be controlled using any suited action client. However, you can utilize our C++ library to control the robot. Internally, the library implements an action client but provides many functionalities including joint control, task space control, kinematics, etc.

Just add pxpincher_lib as build dependency to your node.

See an example usage in pxpincher_lib/src/main.cpp:

 rosrun pxpincher_lib pxpincher_test

The pxpincher_lib also provides a teaching node that can be used to print and modify joint configurations in RVIZ. Additionally, joints of the actual robot can be relaxed in order to guide the robot towards a desired joint configuration manually.

Make sure that the pxpincher_hardware node is running (see Hardware Bringup) and start:

 rosrun pxpincher_lib teach

The pxpincher_ros meta-package is mainly developed and composed for educational purposes.

The individual packages (as part of the meta-package) are licensed under the BSD license. The packages depend on other ROS packages, which are listed in the package.xml and that are also BSD licensed, and the following third-party packages:

• Eigen, MPL2 license, http://eigen.tuxfamily.org
• CerealPort by Gonçalo Cabrita and Pedro Sousa, BSD license, http://wiki.ros.org/cereal_port, (here inlcuded in pxpincher_comm)

In order to simplify the configuration process, especially for educational purposes, some modified versions of the turtlebot_arm packages (https://github.com/corot/turtlebot_arm, https://github.com/turtlebot/turtlebot_arm) are included, modified and renamed (pxpincher_description).

All packages included are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the licenses for more details.

In visualization, the separation of both fingers of the gripper is just a linear approximation of the actual euclidean distance. However, this is ok for our purposes right now.

Note, this package includes an (slighly) adopted version of the turtlebot_arm package (resp. the branch https://github.com/corot/turtlebot_arm.git). It is copied into this metapackage in order to allow a simple integration for students that start working with the PhantomX.