Gazebo Link Attacher

Overview

Attach two Gazebo models with a virtual joint in a generalized grasp hack.

Keywords: gazebo, link, model

License

The source code is released under a Apache License 2.0.

Author: Claudia Ramos
Affiliation: Brazilian Institute of Robotics
Maintainer: Claudia Ramos, claudia.ramos@fieb.org.br

The gazebo_ros_link_attacher package has been tested under ROS2 humble and Ubuntu 22.04. This package has been forked from https://github.com/davidorchansky/gazebo_ros_link_attacher.

Installation

Building

Building with colcon

To build from source, clone the latest version from this repository into your colcon workspace and compile the package using

  cd YOUR_WORKSPACE/src
  git clone https://github.com/Brazilian-Institute-of-Robotics/gazebo_ros_link_attacher.git
  cd YOUR_WORKSPACE
  source /opt/ros/${ROS_DISTRO}/setup.bash
  colcon build --packages-select gazebo_ros_link_attacher --event-handlers console_direct+
  source install/setup.bash

Building from autoproj

See build configuration based on autoproj. After Installation and configuration of autoproj, run the following commands:

  cd YOUR_WORKSPACE
  source env.sh
  amake gazebo_ros_link_attacher
  source install/setup.bash

Unit Tests

Run the unit tests with

  colcon test --packages-select gazebo_ros_link_attacher --event-handlers console_direct+

Run the unit tests with autoproj

  autoproj test enable gazebo_ros_link_attacher
  amake
  autoproj test exec gazebo_ros_link_attacher

Usage

Run demo

Run the command below to start an empty world with the plugin libgazebo_ros_link_attacher.so loaded (in the worlds folder).

ros2 launch gazebo_ros_link_attacher test_attacher.py

It provides the /link_attacher_node/attach service to specify two models and their links to be attached. And /link_attacher_node/detach service to specify two models and their links to be detached.

In another shell, run the command below to spawn three cubes:

  ros2 run gazebo_ros_link_attacher spawn_models.py

The cubes will be attached all between themselves as (1,2), (2,3), (3,1). You can move them with the GUI and you'll see they will move together.

  ros2 run gazebo_ros_link_attacher attach.py

And with 'detach.py' the cubes will be detached and you can move them separately again.

  ros2 run gazebo_ros_link_attacher detach.py

You can also spawn items with the GUI and run a rosservice call:

  ros2 service call /attach 'gazebo_ros_link_attacher/srv/Attach' '{model_name_1: 'cube1',
  link_name_1: 'link',
  model_name_2: 'cube2',
  link_name_2: 'link'}'

And same thing to detach:

  ros2 service call /detach 'gazebo_ros_link_attacher/srv/Attach' '{model_name_1: 'cube1',
  link_name_1: 'link',
  model_name_2: 'cube2',
  link_name_2: 'link'}'

Launch file

test_attacher.py
- Start an empty world with the plugin libgazebo_ros_link_attacher.so loaded. Which provides the /link_attacher_node/attach service to specify two models and their links to be attached.

Bugs & Feature Requests

Please report bugs and request features using the Issue Tracker.