Getting started

The robot uses ROS2 (Robot Operating System 2). Read the ROS2 wiki!. Tutorials and how-to guides are worth to check.

Read also controller documentation to understand why certain controllers are needed and how they control the motion. Here are ros2 control demo repositories and more documentation about controllers.

The Robot

The robot uses dynamixel servos. Servos are controlled via the robot_hardware ROS node, which implements the hardware interface for ros2_control. robot package contains the servo controller configurations for the robot. See robot.yaml, for example. The head supports joint_trajectory_controller. When using this controller, joints can be controlled by sending action messages to the trajectory controller. See bring up for an example of action message.

Joint -> Servo mappings are defined in two files. Configuration file connects servo ID with certain joint. dynamixel_arm.yaml is for servos of robot arm and dynamixel_head.yaml for servos of head.

Project structure

client - contains client to send actions for robot hand
config - dynamixel servo configuration
src - all packages
- src/arm_pack - not use in current configuration
- src/eye_movement - runs action client to create eye motion commands based on the face tracking information
- src/face_tracker - tracks the faces using camera feed and calculates locations and distances of faces and detects mouth movement.
- src/head_gestures - not use in current configuration
- src/inmoov_description - robot files, which define the robot geometry and configuration for simulation (URDF, SRDF & rviz configuration)
- src/robot - robot launch files & servo controller configurations
- src/robot_hardware - hardware interface for ros2_controller, communicates with U2D2 via dynamixel workbench
- src/tts_package - Text-to-speech package for finnish speech synthesis

Servo Table

Note: Servos can be configured using Dynamixel Wizard 2.0

Baud rate: 57600, Voltage: 7.5

Note: You can use Dynamixel Wizard 2.0 to check that servos have enough voltage to operate normally.

Servo ID	Model	Joint name	Description
1	XL430	head_tilt_right_joint	Head tilt right-side
2	XL430	head_tilt_vertical_joint	Head tilt up/down
3	XL430	head_tilt_left_joint	Head tilt left-side
4	XL430	head_pan_joint	Head turn left/right
9	XL320	eyes_shift_horizontal_joint	Eyes shift left/right
11	XL320	eyes_shift_vertical_joint	Eyes shift up/down
12	XL320	head_jaw_joint	Open/close jaw
31	XL320	r_thumb_joint	Open/close thumb
34	XL320	r_index1_joint	Open/close index
37	XL320	r_middle1_joint	Open/close middle
40	XL320	r_ring_joint	Open/close ring
44	XL320	r_pinky_joint	Open/close pinky
47	XL320	unnamed joint	Rotate wrist

Cautions

Note: head tilt range of motion is poor

Note: wrist joint seems to overload very easily

Reason for this detected during inspection of the mechanical assembly. The hand is installed wrong way to the wrist.

Note: servo angle limits are not configured

Note: Be careful not to move joints too much, limits are not set yet

Next steps