Presenting robot control with diagrams

asked 2018-01-04 05:52:02 -0500

LeonNight gravatar image

I'm an undergraduate student and pretty new to ROS so I don't understand how parts of the architecture work yet. For my current project I need some feedback. In a team of 3 we work on controlling a robotic arm via ROS and have to present the progress of our project so far in a couple of days. Therefore we need to make diagrams that show how the whole thing works. As I don't understand everything myself yet I find it difficult to determine what kind of information is important to visualize.

For the project we have created a URDF of the robot so that we can simulate everything from visuals to the hardware interface with gazebo (for now). The URDF and configuration information is published by the parameter server. Using gazebo_ros_control we will simulate the hardware interface that reads information on the current robot pose and outputs it to the Joint State Interface which then publishes the JointStates topic for the controllers. The joint_trajectory_controller reads the user input (goal robot pose) and publishes the necessary joint_trajectory which is read by the Joint Command Interface and output to the hardware interface which then steers the actuators in the gazebo simulation to the goal pose.

I have to admit that I don't really know where the action server fits into this that we are supposed to be using. Also I don't know yet where the user input for a new goal pose is being input (I read somewhere rqt can be used for that).

So far I think it is important to show the following.

  • Information flow Showing the information that is exchanged by the different hardware and software layers, like the parameter server, controller manager, controllers, hardware interface, etc. This will probably look quite similar to the data flow diagram herehttp://gazebosim.org/tutorials/?tut=r...
  • Simulated vs real hardware Showing the difference between what the hardware-side looks like with gazebo and in reality
  • Node architecture Showing all the nodes that need to run and the topics that they publish/subscribe to
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Comments

Welcome! What is your question?

jayess gravatar image jayess  ( 2018-01-04 11:24:13 -0500 )edit