yeshasvitirupachuri / retargeting-robot-models

A repository containing robot URDF models for several popular robots

This repository contains a collection of popular robot models with associated urdf models and meshes. The joint control is achieved through gazeboyarpplugins motor control boards. The models can be launched in gazebo and controlled through yarp infrastructure as the robotic middleware.

Build and Installation

git clone https://github.com/Yeshasvitvs/retargeting-robot-models
cd retargeting-robot-models
mkdir build
cmake ../
make all
make install

NOTE: The default installation location is /usr/local/. This can be changed by updating CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX flag.

The following environment variables are needed to discover the repository files by yarp, gazebo and ros. Update your .bashrc with the following lines.

export YARP_DATA_DIRS=${YARP_DATA_DIRS}:/<path-to-retargeting-robot-models-installation>/share/retargeting-robot-models
export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=${ROS_PACKAGE_PATH}:/<path-to-retargeting-robot-models-installation>/share
export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=${GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH}:/<path-to-retargeting-robot-models-installation>/share/retargeting-robot-models/robots:/<path-to-retargeting-robot-models-installation>/share

Running Retargeting with Multiple Robot Models

The directory retargeting-shell-scripts contains bash scripts to run retargeting demo with multiple robot models easily.

• retargeting-yarprobotinterface.sh script launches yarprobotinterface with configuration files for retargeting for multiple robots
• retargeting-yarprobotstatepublisher.sh script launches yarprobotstatepublisher for multiple robot models

The multiple robot models include the following models:

• Human
• iCub
• Nao
• Walkman
• Atlas
• Baxter

Running Rviz Visualization with Multiple Robot Models

The directory ros contains roslaunch file and rviz configuration file. To launch Rviz Visualization with multiple robot model run the following command on a terminal after running retargeting with multiple robot models

roslaunch retargeting-robot-models retargetingRobotModelsRviz.launch

NOTE: Sometimes even when the environment variables related to ros i.e. ROS_PACKAGE_PATH are correctly configures to discover the urdf models, Rviz fails to display the visual elements of the models even when all the links transforms are available in /tf topic. To overcome this problem add the following line to .bashrc as pointed out here

export LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"