parallel-baxter-simulation

modified baxter simulation package to enable simulation of multiple baxter robot inside Gazebo

This repo is a docker image for Ubuntu16.04, ROS kinetic, Gazebo7 and baxter SDK / simulation package. This repo also include a ZMQ based bridge to control baxter robot in python3 with minimal code. Motivation being to use this with RL/IL algorithms implemented in python3, such as OpenAI's baselines. Gym, Tensorflow and baselines are also installed in the Dockerfile, you can remove them if you don't need these components.

Usage

prerequisite: Docker CE. If you have a NVIDIA GPU and want to use vision in Gazebo, you would need also nvidia-docker 1.0.

clone this repository to $YOUR_ROOT

cd $YOUR_ROOT
docker build -t parallel-baxter .
docker run -it --rm parallel-baxter

if you want to use vision in Gazebo, change the last line to

nvidia-docker run -it --rm -e="DISPLAY" -e="QT_X11_NO_MITSHM=1" -v="/tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix:rw" parallel-baxter

and in another terminal on your host machine, type

xhost +local:root

For more information on using vision in Gazebo inside docker, refer to this

now that you are inside the docker container, run the following to start gazebo and add baxter robot to it:

cd /home/ros_ws
source /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash
source /home/gazebo-ros/devel/setup.bash
source devel/setup.bash
chmod +x baxter.sh
./baxter.sh sim
roslaunch baxter_gazebo baxter_world.launch &  # this start Gazebo7 with nothing in it
roslaunch baxter_gazebo add_baxter.launch robot_ns:=/alice robot_dx:= 0.0 &    # this spawns a baxter with namespace /alice into Gazebo
roslaunch baxter_gazebo add_baxter.launch robot_ns:=/bob robot_dx:=5.0 &       # this spawns a baxter with namespace /bob into Gazebo, at position (5,0).

Using baxter bridge

in a separate terminal, attach to the docker container shell.

python3
>>> from baxterClient import BaxterClient
>>> alice = BaxterClient('/alice', 'left')   # this makes a controller of Alice's left arm
>>> bob = BaxterClient('/bob', 'right')      # this makes a controller of Bob's right arm

Now in the terminal where you have executed "./baxter.sh sim"

cd /home/baxter_bridge
python baxterServerManager.py

When you go back to the python3 terminal, try

>>> alice.observe()
>>> alice.command([0,10,0,0,0,0,0])
>>> alice.command([0,0,0,0,0,0,0], absolute=True)

Test ROS graph

this is useful tool if you want to modify the simulator package and want to test that ROS nodes and topics are working.

cd /home/test
python generateGraphFiles.py
python compareGraph.py > log.txt
grep "WARNING" log.txt

Known issues:

IKservices are still under absolute namespace, using IKservice may crash or give unpredictable results.
TF frames are not tested, these is no guarantee they would work properly.
baxter_examples and baxter_tools are not modified to work with multiple robots.

You are welcome to report bugs, issues, and PRs. However I cannot guarantee timely response.