ICube-Robotics / needle_pantograph_ros2

ROS2 stack to use a 2-Dof pantograph used at the ICube laboratory for needle insertion simulation.

needle_pantograph_ros2

ROS2 stack to use a 2-Dof pantograph used at the ICube laboratory for needle insertion simulation.

Installation

Prepare the environment

1. Install ROS2 Humble and the usual tools (Gazebo, Colcon, etc.)

2. Install EtherLab as specified in the documentation of ethercat_driver_ros2.

Tip

use the ethercat slaves CLI command to check that all is OK andf that you can see your device.

Install this package

WS_PANTOGRAPH=~/dev/ws_pantograph_ros2/
mkdir -p $WS_PANTOGRAPH/src
cd $WS_PANTOGRAPH/src

git clone https://github.com/ICube-Robotics/needle_pantograph_ros2.git
vcs import . < needle_pantograph_ros2/needle_pantograph_ros2.repos
rosdep install --ignore-src --from-paths . -y -r

cd ..
colcon build --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release --symlink-install
source install/setup.bash

Getting started

cd $WS_PANTOGRAPH
source install/setup.bash

# Launch with mock hardware
ros2 launch pantograph_bringup pantograph.launch.py

# Publish torque command
ros2 topic pub -r 200 \
     /forward_effort_controller/commands std_msgs/msg/Float64MultiArray "data: [0.5, 0.0]"

# Mock pHRI (start an interactive RVIZ marker to interact with the pantograph)
ros2 run pantograph_nodes interactive_fake_operator

# With the actual robot
sudo /etc/init.d/ethercat start  # start ETherLab daemon
ros2 launch pantograph_bringup pantograph.launch.py use_fake_hardware:=false

Troubleshouting

To ensure that the pantograph movement match the real robot, change the parameters of the minimal and maximal angles of the joints panto_a1 and panto_a5 in the urdf description If the movement of the proximal segments in the simulation does not match the real movement of the pantograph (axes are inversed), you can change the configuration of the etherCat files in the config folder. You must inverse the sign of the value factor in the 4 beckhoff files.