TurtleBot Arm

Updated for Kinetic!

Kinetic version of turtlebot arm code. I didn’t try on Jade, but it should easily work with minor changes. It’s mostly the same code as on Indigo, with some improvements on turtlebot_arm_block_manipulation (see updated wiki TODO) and specially turtlebot_arm_object_manipulation: a fully revised version of that demo using OKR, SMACH and MoveIt! pick and place.

Selecting Arm Type

By default this will work with the original white/green TurtleBot arm. To use the PhantomX Pincher, set environment variable “TURTLEBOT_ARM1” to pincher. You will need arbotix_ros version 0.11.0 or higher for PhantomX Pincher.

Attaching the Arm to a Robot

Open your xacro-macro-magic URDF, and add something like:

   <include filename="$(find turtlebot_arm_description)/urdf/$(optenv TURTLEBOT_ARM1 turtlebot)_arm.xacro" />
   <turtlebot_arm parent="base_link" color="white" gripper_color="green"
             joints_vlimit="1.571" pan_llimit="-2.617" pan_ulimit="2.617">
      <origin xyz="0 0 1"/>
   </turtlebot_arm>

This will attach a turtlebot arm to your robot. Replace base_link with whatever link you want to attach to, and change the origin as needed. Apart from color, we can configure joints velocity limit and lower/upper limits for the first joint (arm_shoulder_pan) to allow accessing to different operational areas, e.g. left handed vs. right handed robot

Running MoveIt

Ensure you have all the required dependencies by running (you probably did it before compiling):

   cd turtlebot_arm
   rosdep install --from-paths -i -y src

Before start playing, I highly recommend to calibrate your camera extrinsic parameters following this tutorial

The turtlebot_arm_moveit_config/demo.launch is a bit wonky, but the move_group action underlying it works fine. To test your installation, run one of the demos (well, demo by now) from turtlebot_arm_moveit_demos, e.g.:

   rosrun turtlebot_arm_moveit_demos pick_and_place.py