Changing End effector in realtime in moveit

moveit+arm

asked 2017-09-15 04:25:19 -0500

akash_p
26 ●3 ●4 ●7

Hello all, I am using UR5 robot with some custom end effector which obviously works good.Now my requirement is I need to change end effector in run time while move group is running which means URDF which is loaded as robot_description on ros param server is to be changed to other URDF which consist of my second gripper.Also I need to change semantic description on ros param server.Anybody has worked in such scnerio or can help me regarding this?

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Hello, I'm exactly in the same situation, did you manage to find a solution for this ?

matEhickey ( 2017-10-10 02:31:41 -0500 )edit

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answered 2017-10-10 02:50:33 -0500

akash_p
26 ●3 ●4 ●7

updated 2017-10-10 02:51:07 -0500

Yup.I found a workaround to solve this issue not a complete solution though.Following are the steps.

1.Load robot_description to rosparam server with urdf consisting of 1st end effector.

2.Whenever you want to switch to new end effector replace robot_descritption on rosparam server by reading data from URDF of new end effector with complete robot and also replace robot_description_semantic on rosparam server by new srdf file corrosponding to your new URDF.

3.Now I am doing all this replacing through my cpp node and then using system() function to kill move_group node,robot_description node and rviz_node.(Remember to set respawn=true for all these nodes in your corresponding moveit package launch files).

4.All the killed nodes will respawn now and will load my newly uploaded robot_description and robot_description_semantic from rosparam server and in rviz you will be able to visualize your new end effector.

Since moveit move_group node spawns up moveit_planning_scene service once at the start and it loads robot_description only once at start we need to respawn all the nodes to take up our new robot URDF and its corresponding semantic description.Hope this helps you!

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Thank you, well played for this solution, I will try to implement this for my needs !

matEhickey ( 2017-10-10 03:35:36 -0500 )edit

A note of caution: this isn't really a solution, but more of a work-around, and, as you're only restarting some of the consumers of those parameters/artefacts, you run the risk of ending up with a 'desynced' ROS node graph, in which some participants are using one version of robot_description ..

gvdhoorn ( 2017-10-10 03:59:02 -0500 )edit

.. and related parameters, and others another. In controlled environments this probably won't be a big problem, but I wanted to note it (for future readers) in any case.

The real problem here is the immutability of robot_description, and the fact that none of its current consumers are set up ..

gvdhoorn ( 2017-10-10 04:00:05 -0500 )edit

.. to deal with changes to that parameter.

Also note: there are multiple ways to parse urdfs (raw xml, urdf_dom, custom parsers, etc), and many nodes even use a combination of those different ways at the same time. This all makes "changing EEFs in 'real-time'" a rather complex piece of ..

gvdhoorn ( 2017-10-10 04:02:07 -0500 )edit

.. functionality to implement. Much more complex than a lot of people assume.

gvdhoorn ( 2017-10-10 04:02:33 -0500 )edit

Finally: some alternative work-arounds:

if the EEF doesn't require any control (based on URDF, that is): use MoveIt's attached collision object infrastructure for your gripper. Those can be attached and detached at runtime without the earlier mentioned complications (although it will be ..

gvdhoorn ( 2017-10-10 04:03:47 -0500 )edit

.. MoveIt-specific)

2 . run two move_group instances in parallel. Namespaced and each with their own robot_description and related parameters.

gvdhoorn ( 2017-10-10 04:04:51 -0500 )edit

@akash_p wrote: