VITO, the UNIPI Robot

The UNIPI robot is composed of two Kuka LWR equipped with two Pisa/IIT Soft Hands each. The arms are mounted on a torso that is fixed on a working table.

This package use ROS/indigo, Gazebo4 on Ubuntu 14.04.

Dependancies to pisa-iit-soft-hand package

Some launch files require the pisa-iit-soft-hand package to be installed. The repository can be cloned from pisa-iit-soft-hand.

Clonning with sub-modules

Clone recursively:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/CentroEPiaggio/vito-robot.git

• For simulation, you need Gazebo4 or later to install sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-gazebo4-ros and all 'ros-controls' framework (from synaptic/apt-get is ok as well).

• For the real scenario, you need to perform camera-robot calibration. We provide a calibration package that can help you to do that. However, other method that provides where the cameras (asus and two eyes of the KIT head) are w.r.t. the world is valid.

Use

The command to launch the robot in simulation is:

roslaunch vito_description display.launch

The command to launch the robot for real is:

roslaunch vito_description display.launch use_rviz:=true load_moveit:=false use_calibration_package:=false left_arm_enabled:=true right_arm_enabled:=true use_robot_sim:=false

Please, check the available options and docs for arguments with:

roslaunch --ros-args vito_descrtiption display.launch

By default, the simulation is paused at the begining to wait for all controllers and stuff load, otherwise, the robots move around without control. When the command above stop sending messages on the screen, you need to call the following service in a different terminal:

rosservice call /gazebo/unpause_physics

By default, in the real scenarion, the calibration package is used as default, if you are using an external calibration, remember to disable it in the display.launch file, or just launch as:

roslaunch vito_description display.launch use_calibration_package:=false

The configured groups in MoveIt! for this robot are:

• right_arm: a serial kinematic chain from world to right_arm_7_link
• right_hand_arm: a serial kinematic chain from world to right_hand_palm_link
• left_arm: a serial kinematic chain from world to left_arm_7_link
• left_hand_arm: a serial kinematic chain from world to left_hand_palm_link
• head: a kinematic tree containing all joints that belongs to the head
• dual_hand_arm: it contains groups right_hand_arm and left_hand_arm for bi-manual tasks.
• full_robot: it contains the grous right_hand_arm, left_hand_arm and head

There is a home pose called <GROUP_NAME>_home for each group that you can use readly.

Note: the right_hand_arm and left_hand_arm groups, hence the full_robot as well, do not include the hand synergy joints. This is only because in our demos, we don't plan the hand closure, but just close it.

For the real scenario, check instruction on each of the components on how to set the real hardware up properly.

IMPORTANT: We don't use the mounting plate on the KUKA arms, the small disc that can be attached to the 7th link before the true end-effector. This is important for calibration and mounting the hand to be consistent with the model.

Camera-robot calibration

If you use this calibration package, we provide the robot model that contains the calibrator piece on the robot at robot/vito_calib.urdf.xacro that assit the calibration procedure. Just follow the instructions in the calibration package. Recall that you can use any external package for this as well.

Useful configured commands

• UPLOAD ALL DRIVERS WITH ROBOT-CAMERA CALIBRATION BROADCASTER:

roslaunch vito_description display.launch left_arm_enabled:=true right_arm_enabled:=true left_hand_enabled:=true right_hand_enabled:=true load_moveit:=false use_rviz:=false use_robot_sim:=false

• UPLOAD ALL DRIVERS ONLY (NO CAMERA CALIBRATION):

roslaunch vito_description display.launch left_arm_enabled:=true right_arm_enabled:=true left_hand_enabled:=true right_hand_enabled:=true load_moveit:=false use_rviz:=false use_robot_sim:=false use_calibration_package:=false

• UPLOAD MOVEIT ENVIRONMENT:

roslaunch vito_description display.launch load_moveit:=true use_rviz:=false use_robot_sim:=false

• UPLOAD EVERYTHING IN SIMULATION:

roslaunch vito_description display.launch

• UPLOAD SIMULATION DRIVERS ONLY (AS IF YOU LAUNCH THE ROBOT DRIVERS IN A REMOTE PC):

roslaunch vito_description display.launch load_moveit:=true use_rviz:=false calibration:=false

A suggested hardware cockpit setup, using the joint trajectory controller rqt plugin: