tactile_sensor_ros

ROS packages for the sun/unicampania force/tactile sensors.

Installation

You need all the pkgs listed in https.rosinstall or ssh.rosinstall.

You can download all the repos using wstool

# In the src of your catkin ws
wstool init #if not already initialized
wstool merge https://raw.githubusercontent.com/marcocostanzo/tactile_sensor_ros/master/https.rosinstall
wstool update

If you prefer to clone via ssh, merge with

wstool merge https://raw.githubusercontent.com/marcocostanzo/tactile_sensor_ros/master/ssh.rosinstall

Setup

To use the wired finger at full speed (500Hz) you need to install setserial:

sudo apt-get install setserial

When the finger is connected to the PC, take note of the dev file that Linux assigns to the device. It is something like /dev/ttyUSB# with # a number. You can check it using the command:

ls /dev/ttyUSB*

Typically the first finger that you connect takes the id /dev/ttyUSB0 and the second takes id /dev/ttyUSB1.

You need the access rights to the device. /dev/ttyUSB# is owned by root and the group is dialout. You can simply add your user to the dialout group:

sudo usermod -a -G groupName userName

Run the ROS driver

You can run the driver using the launch file:

roslaunch sun_tactile_driver tactile_serial.launch

It has the following parameters:

Parameter	Description	Default
`serial_port`	Device file associated with the finger	`/dev/ttyUSB0`
`baud_rate`	Baud rate for serial communication. For the wired fingers it has to be 1000000.	`1000000`
`voltage_raw_topic`	Output topic for the raw voltages	`tactile_voltage/raw`
`voltage_rect_topic`	Output topic for the de-biased voltages	`tactile_voltage/rect`
`action_compute_bias`	Action name that computes the bias*	`tactile_voltage/action_compute_bias`

*the bias si computed at startup, you can force a new computation calling this action.

License

This project is licensed under the GNUv3 License - see the LICENSE file for details