MEAM520: Pick and Place Challenge 2021

High level overview of the functionality developed (`lib`)

calculateFK.py: Calculates the end effector position w.r.t world frame for a given joint configuration of the manipulator Code | Detailed Explanation
calcJacobian.py: Calculates the Jacobian Matrix for a given joint configuration of the manipulator Code | Detailed Explanation
IK_velocity.py: Calculates the joint velocities for achieving a particular end effector velocity in a given joint configuration Code | Detailed Explanation
solveIK.py: Calculates joint configuration for achieving particular end effector pose Code | Detailed Explanation
rrt.py: Rapidly-exploring random tree planner in joint space for traversing between two joint configurations Code | Detailed Explanation

Subdirectory Structure:

core: contains support code we provide to you, such as helper functions and interfaces for interacting with the robot (either simulated or real!)
lib: contains functions implementing algorithms to solve computational problems such as forward and inverse kinematics and trajectory planning
labs: contains test scripts that use the algorithms you implement in lib and the tools we provide in core to control the robot and achieve tasks
ros: contains code necessary to launch the simulator.

Native Install Instructions

Operating System

The simulator must be run on Ubuntu 20.04 with ROS noetic installed. You can follow the standard installation instructions for Ubuntu 20.04 and ROS noetic.

panda_simulator installation

To get started using this development environment, you must first follow the instructions to install panda_simulator, a Gazebo-based simulator for the Franka Emika Panda robot. The only difference is that you will name the catkin workspace meam520_ws to avoid conflicts with other projects.

The instructions specify to use catkin build, but we recommend building with catkin_make_isolated instead.

Once you've completed that installation, add

source ~/meam520_ws/devel_isolated/setup.bash

to your ~/.bashrc to source the workspace. If all has been done correctly, you should be able to run

roslaunch panda_gazebo panda_world.launch

to launch the Gazebo simulation.

Speed up Gazebo shutdown

Since you may be launching and killing Gazebo many times , we recommend reducing the clean shutdown wait time for a better experience. Edit the file:

cd /opt/ros/noetic/lib/python3/dist-packages/roslaunch
sudo vim nodeprocess.py

and change the lines that say

...
_TIMEOUT_SIGINT = 15.0 #seconds

_TIMEOUT_SIGTERM = 2.0 #seconds
...

to 2.0 and 1.0 respectively.

Update Python path to find core module

Add the following line to your ~/.bashrc to allow your python scripts to find the meam520 core modules.

export PYTHONPATH="${PYTHONPATH}:/home/${USER}/meam520_ws/src/meam520_labs"

meam520_labs installation

Once you have a forked, cloned, and set the upstream for the git repository run catkin_make_isolated again.

Once the build finishes, open a new terminal and run:

roslaunch meam520_labs lab0.launch

To check that the installation is successful, run a demo script:

cd ~/meam520_ws/src/meam520_labs/labs/lab0
python demo.py

You should see the robot in Gazebo moving.

vanshilshah97/pick_place_challenge