RoTools

RoTools is an all-in-one ROS package for high-level robotic task scheduling, visual perception, path planning, simulation, and direct-/tele-manipulation control. It leverages BehaviorTree to deliver fast task construction and coordination, and provides various utilities to bridge the gap between real/simulated robot and the high level task scheduler.

:orange_book: Contents

The packages compose of two components: roport and rotools.

roport

This module provides the application level entrance ports of the RoTools package. It is a middleware that allows using rotools cpp/python interfaces in ROS environment. It provides:

Python based

• MoveIt Python Server for controlling the robot’s single kinematic chain using MoveIt’s Python interface.
• Sensing Server that bridges the perception modules outside the ROS environment (like those run in Python3) to ROS via HTTP.
• Planner Server bridges ROS modules with the planning algorithm outside the ROS environment (running in Python3 or on another server on the local network) via HTTP. This server is designed for online control, that given the current state, it will query the algorithm for the next state. For now, the states are Cartesian poses.
• Snapshot Server enables recording various types of ROS msgs to files.
• Websocket Client enables transmitting ROS msgs among two PCs through ROS Bridge.
• Xsens Server converting the live stream from Xsens MVN Awinda motion capture suit to ROS pose messages.
• OptiTrack Client converting streams from OptiTrack socket server to pose msgs.
• Hardware/Simulation interfaces adapted for a variety types of robots.

CPP based

• MoveIt CPP Server simultaneously controlling multiple kinematic chains of a robot with MoveIt’s action interface.
• Path Planning Interface utilizes Humanoid Path Planner to plan whole-body collision free paths for high-dof robots.
• Msg Converter converts msg from one type to another, be able to modify the name field, and enables smoothly start the control of certain joint groups.
• Task Scheduler using behavior tree for task scheduling. A bunch of general purpose services and a node library are provided for building the task tree fast.

rotools

This Python package hosted under src/ is a versatile robotic toolbox aimed for fast prototyping. It includes foundational modules for robotic problems including path & trajectory planning, kinematics & dynamics calculation, sensing, transformation calculation, simulation, and so forth.

:hammer: Prerequisite

System

Recommended: Ubuntu 20.04 with ROS Noetic, Python 3.8.

This software is continuously built using catkin_make and catkin tools on 20.04. The support of 18.04 is no longer maintained.

Supported Robots

This package has been developed as we use the following robots featuring sophisticated design, yet the package itself is agnostic to robot type and can be used to various types including robot arms and mobile manipulators.

• Walker from UBTech
• CURI/Curiosity from CLOVER Lab CUHK

Groot (optional)

Groot is a Graphical Editor, written in C++ and Qt, to create BehaviorTrees. The tree files should be better edited using this software.