SCHUNK SVH Simulation

This package provides a simulated SVH for controller development and testing.

Physics engine and rationales

We build the simulator on Todorov’s MuJoCo physics engine, which has been acquired and open-sourced by Google here. This gives us a strong environment to design and test finger control for object manipulation with minimal dependencies.

Build and install

1. Download MuJoCo’s pre-built library package and extract that somewhere. It’s ready-to-use and we will just point to it during the build.

   cd $HOME
   wget https://github.com/deepmind/mujoco/releases/download/3.2.3/mujoco-3.2.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
   tar -xf mujoco-3.2.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
   

1. We make use of the GLFW3 wrapper around OpenGL. You can install it on Ubuntu with

   sudo apt-get install libglfw3-dev libglew-dev
   

1. Switch to the root of your ROS2 workspace and build the package (standalone) with

   colcon build --cmake-args "-DMUJOCO_DIR=$HOME/mujoco-3.2.3" --packages-select schunk_svh_simulation
   

Getting started

In the root of your ROS2 workspace

source install/setup.bash
ros2 launch schunk_svh_simulation simulation.launch.py

This will start a simulated world with the SCHUNK SVH.

The simulated SVH exposes the same hardware_interfaces like a real right hand does. For instance, you can use a joint_trajectory_controller to move each joint for easy testing.

source install/setup.bash
rqt --clear-config

Inside rqt, navigate to Plugins, Robot Tools, joint trajectory controller. You might need to install the rqt_joint_trajectory_controller if that’s not part of your default rqt installation:

sudo apt-get install ros-<version>-rqt-joint-trajectory-controller

Select the appropriate /controller_manager and right_hand as controller. You can now control each of the SVH’s joints with sliders.

Interaction with the simulator

Supported commands:

• Rotate: Left mouse button
• Zoom: Middle mouse button
• Drag: Right mouse button
• Restart: Backspace key

Hardware interfaces for controllers

Exposed interfaces per joint:

• command_interfaces: position
• state_interfaces: position, velocity