The tables demo consists of an environment with items on multiple tables, in which the robot shall

• find the box and place it onto the target table,
• find the multimeter and place it into the box,
• in any order,
• and react to changes to the environment, e.g. items being moved around during the demo.

For details about the event at which this demo was presented, see its (DFKI internal) Mobipick tables demo wiki page.

This demo might install a lot, depending on what you already have on your system. Your catkin workspace for mobipick, if you don't mind adding further repositories, or a new catkin workspace with only this repository is recommended to start with. vcs and wstool will be installed when needed, ROS and Python 3 are assumed to be available on your system.

./install-deps.sh
./build.sh

Alternatively, you can use the Docker environment created by our colleague Andreas Bresser for a simple all-in-one quick start.

Start up the robot according to the (DFKI internal) instructions on the wiki, then:

roslaunch mobipick_bringup mobipick_bringup_both.launch  # already part of the startup instructions
roslaunch pbr_dope dope.launch
roslaunch tables_demo_bringup bringup.launch   # optional: world_config:=cic_tables (default: moelk_tables)

To start the full tables demo, then run:

rosrun tables_demo_planning tables_demo_node.py  # optional: <number of target table>, e.g., "4"; default: 2

To start the power drill pick&place demo, run:

rosrun tables_demo_planning pick_n_place_demo_node.py

Optionally, for making the robot speak, run this command on a PC with a speaker (e.g., your laptop):

rosrun espeak_ros espeak_node

Optionally for visualization:

rosrun rviz rviz -d `rospack find tables_demo_bringup`/config/pick_n_place.rviz __ns:=mobipick

roslaunch tables_demo_bringup demo_sim.launch
rosrun tables_demo_planning tables_demo_node.py

The optional components above for speaker and visualization work in simulation as well.

To use plexmo instead of the original version of plan execution use uplexmo_tables_demo_node.py instead of tables_demo_node.py for starting the tables demo:

rosrun tables_demo_planning uplexmo_tables_demo_node.py

Goal of the robot in this demo is to

• test grasplan
• grasp multiple objects in simulation
• useful for debugging

roscore
roslaunch tables_demo_bringup demo_sim.launch robot_x:=12.43 robot_y:=2.21 robot_yaw:=1.5708
rosrun rviz rviz -d `rospack find tables_demo_bringup`/config/pick_n_place.rviz __ns:=mobipick

Pick

rosrun grasplan pick_obj_test_action_client __ns:=mobipick power_drill_with_grip table_1

Optionally you can specify a list of objects to ignore/delete from planning scene. This will allow e.g. to pick a box with objects inside it. To run do:

rosrun grasplan pick_obj_test_action_client __ns:=mobipick power_drill_with_grip table_1 object_to_ignore_1 object_to_ignore_2 ...
rosrun grasplan pick_obj_test_action_client __ns:=mobipick klt table_1 multimeter_1

Place

rosrun grasplan place_obj_test_action_client __ns:=mobipick table_3 true

Insert

rosrun grasplan insert_obj_test_action_client __ns:=mobipick klt_3 true

If you want to grasp the other objects you can use the following robot pose.

roslaunch tables_demo_bringup demo_sim.launch robot_x:=10.46 robot_y:=2.47 robot_yaw:=3.1415

If you want to grasp another object after picking, please place the object first.

Goal of the robot in this demo is to

• fetch the power drill from the table,
• hand it over to a person,
• return empty-handed to its home position.

roslaunch mobipick_bringup mobipick_bringup_both.launch
roslaunch pbr_dope dope.launch
roslaunch mobipick_pick_n_place mobipick_pick_n_place.launch world:=moelk_tables_demo
rosservice call /mobipick/continue_statemachine

An alternative version of this demo exists which makes use of the generic plan execution and monitoring module plexmo.

This demo can either be run on the real robot like this:

roslaunch mobipick_bringup mobipick_bringup_both.launch
roslaunch pbr_dope dope.launch
rosrun tables_demo_planning uplexmo_pick_n_place_demo_node.py

... or in Gazebo like this:

roslaunch tables_demo_bringup demo_sim.launch
rosrun tables_demo_planning uplexmo_pick_n_place_demo_node.py

When running in Gazebo, run the following as soon as the robot has reached the "handover" pose:

rosservice call /mobipick/simulate_user_interaction before the timeout

This will cause the robot to open its gripper, since we simulated a user holding the power drill with the command above. Since nobody is actually holding the power drill in Gazebo, it will drop to the floor. Since the robot cannot detect this, it will assume that the handover was successful and continue with the demo.

If no simulate_user_interaction command is given within a timeout of 30 seconds, plan execution will fail (as expected, since the handover was unsuccessful).

Used to send hierarchical tasks directly to the planner and executor.

On the real robot:

roslaunch mobipick_bringup mobipick_bringup_both.launch
roslaunch pbr_dope dope.launch
rosrun tables_demo_planning task_server_node.py

For Gazebo:

roslaunch tables_demo_bringup demo_sim.launch
rosrun tables_demo_planning task_server_node.py

Now tasks can be sent to the robot using the ROS client provided:

rosrun tables_demo_planning task_server_client.py task_name parameter_1 ... parameter_n

Depending on the chosen task, different parameters have to be sent to the server. Available tasks and their parameters can be seen here.

Example task to move the multimeter_1 from its current location to table_2:

rosrun tables_demo_planning task_server_client.py move_item mobipick multimeter_1 table_2

Additionally it is possible to send tasks to the task server using the provided ROS action message. The default topic to send ROS actions to is /mobipick/task_planning.

Install and source the dot_graph_visualization rqt plugin, then call it with:

rqt --standalone dot_graph_visualization

This repo has a pre-commit check that runs in CI. You can use this locally and set it up to run automatically before you commit something. To install, use pip:

pip3 install --user pre-commit

To run over all the files in the repo manually:

pre-commit run -a

To run pre-commit automatically before committing in the local repo, install the git hooks:

pre-commit install

If you use this work in your research, consider citing our PlanRob 2023 paper:

@inproceedings{lima2023physics,
  title={A Physics-Based Simulated Robotics Testbed for Planning and Acting Research},
  author={Lima, O and G{\"u}nther, M and Sung, A and Stock, S and Vinci, M and Smith, A and Krause, JC and Hertzberg, J},
  booktitle={ICAPS Workshop on Planning and Robotics (PlanRob 2023)},
  year={2023}
}