This project contains all the code written for our coursework for the second year course Introduction to Robotics at Heriot-Watt University. We implemented a tic-tac-toe game played with a human against a robotic manipulator.

We used a Kinova Gen3 Lite and Coppeliasim for simulation, along with ROS (Humble) as the main part of the software stack.

This code in the repository is licensed under an MIT license, with the exception of files provided by Kinova inc. See license for more info.

Instructions

To run the example coppelia simulation, in the first terminal source, source ROS

source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash

and then open the coppeliaSim file: coppelia/exampleSubPub.ttt

In a second terminal, cd into b38ro_ws, and build + source the workspace with

colcon build
source install/setup.bash

Then run the example ROS node with

ros2 launch joints robot.launch.py

Now starting the simulation should show start logging whatever the node publishes.

This launch file should also start the rosbridge websocket server if you have the package ros-humble-rosbridge-suite installed. If not started, run

ros2 launch rosbridge_server rosbridge_websocket_launch.xml

Then open up UI by opening the file gui/index.html in the browser.

Adding custom messages to Coppeliasim's ROS interface

As Float32MultiArray does not come with the included messages for coppelia. We need to add it and recompile the build.

Clone the repository for simROS and add the line export COPPELIASIM_ROOT_DIR=(coppelia directory) to your ~/.bashrc.

Add the following in the interfaces.txt:

std_msgs/msg/Float32MultiArray
std_msgs/msg/MultiArrayLayout
std_msgs/msg/MultiArrayDimension
trajectory_msgs/msg/JointTrajectory
trajectory_msgs/msg/JointTrajectoryPoint
sensor_msgs/msg/JointState
geometry_msgs/msg/Twist

Change the cloned directory's name to sim_ros2_interface and run

colcon build

It should about take 5 mins to complete the build and then you're good to go :)

Running the physical robot

To simulate the moveit commander, run

ros2 launch kinova_gen3_6dof_robotiq_2f_85_moveit_config robot.launch.py robot_type:=gen3_lite gripper:=gen3_lite_2f robot_ip:=yyy.yyy.yy.yy use_fake_hardware:=True

To start the real robot, run

ros2 launch kinova_gen3_6dof_robotiq_2f_85_moveit_config robot.launch.py robot_model:=gen3_lite gripper:=gen3_lite_2f robot_ip:=192.168.1.10 use_fake_hardware:=False

To move to a cartesian position:

ros2 topic pub /cart_pose geometry_msgs/msg/Pose "{position:{x: 0.3, y: 0.425, z: 0.3}, orientation: {x: 3.142, y: 0, z: 3.142}}" -1

To send joint commands,

  ros2 topic pub /joint_trajectory_controller/joint_trajectory trajectory_msgs/msg/JointTrajectory "{  joint_names: [joint_1, joint_2, joint_3, joint_4, joint_5, joint_6],
    points: [
      { positions: [2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2], time_from_start: { sec: 10 } },
    ]
  }" -1