MoveIt Visual Tools

Helper functions for displaying and debugging MoveIt data in Rviz via published markers, trajectories, and MoveIt collision objects. It is sometimes hard to understand everything that is going on internally with MoveIt, but using these quick convenience functions allows one to easily visualize their code. This package is built in top of rviz_visual_tools and all those features are included via class inheritance.

This package helps you visualize:

• Basic Rviz geometric shapes
• MoveIt collision objects
• MoveIt and ROS trajectories
• Robot states
• End effectors
• Interactive markers to move robot arms using IK from remote applications

Developed by Dave Coleman at the Correll Robotics Lab, University of Colorado Boulder with outside contributors.

• Travis CI
• ROS Buildfarm - AMD64 Xenial Debian Build - Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
• ROS Buildfarm - AMD64 Xenial Devel Build - Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
• ROS Buildfarm - AMD64 Bionic Source Build - Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
• ROS Buildfarm - AMD64 Bionic Devel Build - Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Install

Ubuntu Debian

sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-moveit-visual-tools

Install From Source

Clone this repository into a catkin workspace, then use the rosdep install tool to automatically download its dependencies. Depending on your current version of ROS, use:

rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro kinetic

Quick Start Demo

First launch Rviz:

roslaunch moveit_visual_tools demo_rviz.launch

Then run some demos displaying robot states and collision objects:

roslaunch moveit_visual_tools demo.launch

Code API

See VisualTools Class Reference

Usage

We’ll assume you will be using these helper functions within a class.

Initialize

Add to your includes:

#include <moveit_visual_tools/moveit_visual_tools.h>

Add to your class’s member variables:

// For visualizing things in rviz
moveit_visual_tools::MoveItVisualToolsPtr visual_tools_;

In your class’ constructor add:

visual_tools_.reset(new moveit_visual_tools::MoveItVisualTools("base_frame","/moveit_visual_markers"));

Collision Object Functions

Helpers for adding and removing objects from the MoveIt planning scene. CO stands for Collision Object and ACO stands for Active Collision Object.

• cleanupCO
• cleanupACO
• attachCO
• publishCollisionBlock
• publishCollisionCylinder
• publishCollisionTree
• publishCollisionTable
• publishCollisionWall

And more…

Animate Trajectories

Higher level robot and trajectory functions

• publishTrajectoryPath
• publishTrajectoryPoint
• publishRobotState
• publishAnimatedGrasps
• publishIKSolutions

Show parts of a robot

File truncated at 100 lines see the full file

Changelog for package moveit_visual_tools

3.5.2 (2018-12-10)

• Use LOGNAME for named logging (#42)
• Eigen::Affine3d -> Eigen::Isometry3d (#39)
• Contributors: Dave Coleman

3.5.1 (2018-11-14)

• Adding trigger call to animations when batch_publishing_enabled_ is enabled (#36)
• Contributors: Mike Lautman

3.5.0 (2018-09-05)

• Add Markdown ROS Buildfarm badges for Melodic
• Fixing melodic branch with tf2 updates (#34)
• Additional visualization (#31)
  • adding a visualization for publishing a box with width, height, and depth
  • adding additional publishCollisionCuboid method overloads
  • changing x,y,z to width, depth, height
• Fixup CMakeLists and package.xml (#30)
• Triggering UPDATE_GEOMETRY is sufficient, dont spinOnce
  • triggering UPDATE_SCENE leads to sending a full planning scene including all meshes. For all use-cases in this lib UPDATE_GEOMETRY is sufficient and sends only diffs
  • calling ros::spinOnce() in random places messes up the event queue (e.g. joint state updates being processed in gui thread instead of the async spinner thread)
• Fix API compatibility by providing a default empty list of end-effector joints
• Allow setting joint values for end-effector marker currently end-effector markers are based on the default robot state (ie all zero), this allows passing a vector of doubles for all active joint in the end-effector group Passing a new set of joint values will invalidate the cache but for our use-case this is neglectible and could be optimized later
• Moved boost::shared_ptr to std for tf2
• Converted to use tf2 moveit interfaces
• Fix broken CI for Melodic
• Fix Continuous Integration
• Contributors: Dave Coleman, Ian McMahon, Mike Lautman, Simon Schmeisser

3.4.0 (2017-12-27)

• Apply current MoveIt clang-format
• Various improvements needed while finishing planning thesis
• Fix greater than/less than issue in clearance check
• Ability to specify clearance for random state
• Small threading fixes
• imarker: Fix setToRandomState() imarker: Switch to std::makeshared
• Improve console output
• Contributors: Dave Coleman, Mike Lautman

3.3.0 (2017-06-20)

• Change error message to warning
• Make planning scene monitor publicly exposed
• Remove label from imarkers
• Ability to move a collision object without removing it first
• IMarkerRobotState: update imarkers location when setting robot state
• IMarkerRobotState: Added setRobotState()
• IMarkerRobotState: Renamed function publishRobotState()
• MoveItVisualTools: renamed variable to psm_
• Expose verbose collision checking
• Contributors: Dave Coleman

3.2.1 (2016-11-02)

• New publishTrajectoryPath() functions
• New publishTrajectoryLine() functions
• getRobotState() return by reference
• Trajectory path has smaller vertices
• IMarkerRobotState: added isStateValid()
• Contributors: Dave Coleman

3.2.0 (2016-10-20)

• Added publishState() to imarker_robot_state
• New publishTrajectoryLine() function that automatically chooses end effectors to visualize
• New collision table function that takes z input
• Fixed callbacks for multiple EEFs
• Allow for two end effectors
• Ability to use two end effectors for interactive markers
• Make ik solving at any end effector link, not just end of kinematic chain
• Better debugging for collision
• Only save when mouse up
• Fix API for changes in rviz_visual_tools
• Allow collision walls to have variable z location

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