kinova_gen3_control

Open-source ros_control hardware_interface::RobotHW (hardware_interface::EffortJointInterface and hardware_interface::JointStateInterface) implementation for the Kinova Gen3 arm

Installation

Clone this repository to your catkin workspace.

cd ~
mkdir -p my_catkin_ws/src
cd my_catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/travers-rhodes/kinova_gen3_control.git

Clone the `kortex_description` package

You can clone this from https://github.com/Kinovarobotics/ros_kortex.git (and just ignore the rest of the packages that are bundled with that).

cd ~/my_catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/Kinovarobotics/ros_kortex.git

Make sure you have all required dependencies installed

cd ~/my_catkin_ws/src
source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash
rosdep init
rosdep update
rosdep install --from-paths . --ignore-src -r

Include the Kinova API

Please download the latest kortex_api zip folder listed at https://github.com/Kinovarobotics/kortex

Then unzip that file, then run something like the below to copy the needed lib and include files into new directories called kinova_gen3_control/kortex_api/linux_gcc_x86-64/lib and kinova_gen3_control/kortex_api/linux_gcc_x86-64/include

cd ~/Downloads
wget https://artifactory.kinovaapps.com:443/artifactory/generic-public/kortex/API/2.3.0/linux_x86-64_x86_gcc.zip
unzip linux_x86-64_x86_gcc.zip -d linux_gcc_x86-64
cp -r ~/Downloads/linux_gcc_x86-64/* ~/my_catkin_ws/src/kinova_gen3_control/kortex_api/

Build the packages we care about (blacklist all the extra packages bundled with ros_kortex)

cd ~/my_catkin_ws
catkin config --blacklist kortex_control kortex_driver kortex_examples gazebo_version_helpers gazebo_grasp_plugin roboticsgroup_gazebo_plugins gen3_lite_gen3_lite_2f_move_it_config gen3_move_it_config gen3_robotiq_2f_140_move_it_config roboticsgroup_upatras_gazebo_plugins
source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash
catkin build

TL;DR Installation

Together, all the install instructions above are

cd ~
mkdir -p my_catkin_ws/src
cd ~/my_catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/travers-rhodes/kinova_gen3_control.git
git clone https://github.com/Kinovarobotics/ros_kortex.git
source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash
rosdep init
rosdep update
rosdep install --from-paths . --ignore-src -r
cd ~/Downloads
rm -f linux_x86-64_x86_gcc.zip
rm -rf linux_gcc_x86-64
wget https://artifactory.kinovaapps.com:443/artifactory/generic-public/kortex/API/2.3.0/linux_x86-64_x86_gcc.zip
unzip linux_x86-64_x86_gcc.zip -d linux_gcc_x86-64
cp -r ~/Downloads/linux_gcc_x86-64/* ~/my_catkin_ws/src/kinova_gen3_control/kortex_api/ 
cd ~/my_catkin_ws
catkin config --blacklist kortex_control kortex_driver kortex_examples kortex_gazebo gazebo_version_helpers gazebo_grasp_plugin roboticsgroup_gazebo_plugins  gen3_lite_gen3_lite_2f_move_it_config gen3_move_it_config gen3_robotiq_2f_140_move_it_config roboticsgroup_upatras_gazebo_plugins
source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash
catkin build
source devel/setup.bash

Usage

roslaunch kinova_gen3_control default.launch will

Connect to the Kinova Gen3 arm (assumed to be at IP address 192.168.1.10) using a TCP Transport Client on port 10000
Connect to the Kinova Gen3 arm using a UDP Transport Client on port 10001
Put the Robot in low-level control loop and load and start a hardware_interface::EffortJointInterface for each joint to send effort commands to each joint.
Load and start a effort_controllers::JointPositionController for each joint, which provides a ROS topic /joint_X_position_controller/command for each joint.
Start a controller_manager::ControllerManager that can be used to switch between high-level ros_control::Controllers. For example, to switch to a joint_trajectory_controller (the information for which is already loaded by default.launch) you can run the following from the command line:

rosservice call controller_manager/switch_controller "start_controllers: ['gen3_joint_trajectory_controller']
stop_controllers: ['joint_1_position_controller',
                   'joint_2_position_controller',
                   'joint_3_position_controller',
                   'joint_4_position_controller',
                   'joint_5_position_controller',
                   'joint_6_position_controller',
                   'joint_7_position_controller'
]
strictness: 1
start_asap: false
timeout: 0.0"
ok: True

Debugging

If you want to test this package without a network connection to a robot, you can run roslaunch kinova_gen3_control default.launch fake_connection:=true

Realtime

Ideally, this node should be run on a realtime operating system, to maintain consistent timings between commands to the robot. That's why the launch file runs this node on the machine="control-computer". By default the control-computer machine is defined to be localhost, but you can alternatively have this launch file run the node on a different machine by follwing the instructions at http://wiki.ros.org/roslaunch/XML/machine.

If you want the control-computer to be a different machine from localhost, you should set the arg use_local_control_computer to false.

travers-rhodes/kinova_gen3_control