ROS Integration for TSA-Driven Soft Gripper

Acknowledgment

This repository was created for the Smart Robotics Lab at the University of Nevada, Reno. It is the companion repository to ROS_ur3ehand.

Purpose

PlatformIO Arduino code to allow the University of Nevada, Reno Smart Robotics Lab's TSA-Driven Soft Robotic Hand to send and receive ROS messages for external control.

The experimental branch shows efforts to parse long-form messages to control individual motors, their setpoints, and trigger macro commands.

The pickplacePoC branch shows simplified, non-complex messaging in which messages consist of a single character sent via ROS to trigger exclusively high-level commands for purpose of a basic pick-and-place demonstration using the hand mounted to a Universal Robots UR3e manipulator.

Dependencies

Use of this code requires installation of the ROSserial packages, which can be installed with:

sudo apt install ros-<distro>-rosserial ros-<distro>-rosserial-arduino ros-<distro>-rosserial-python

and the rosserial client library for Arduino, which can be installed to the target directory with:

git clone https://github.com/ros-drivers/rosserial.git

Note: The roslib Arduino library is already included in the 'lib' folder in this repo

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General Use

Once configured, a rosserial Python node can be launched using:

rosrun rosserial_python serial_node.py <port_name>

In general, this will be:

rosrun rosserial_python serial_node.py /dev/ttyACM0

Messages can be sent to the Arduino via ROS in the form:

rostopic pub arduino std_msgs/String <command>

Callback messages from the Arduino can be seen using:

rostopic echo /chatter

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Integration with UR3e

For full details of the integration of the gripper with the UR3e manipulator, view this repository's companion repository.

Troubleshooting

If ROS informs the user that permission to access a port is denied, try running:

sudo chmod a+rw <port_name>

ex:

sudo chmod a+rw /dev/ttyACM0