Panda Simulation Environment (Gazebo + MoveIt!)

We placed a Franka Emika Panda Robot on a table in Gazebo and placed an object in front of it. The robot had a Realsense RS200 Camera attached to its wrist and a Panda Parallel Jaw Gripper. The Robot is controlled by MoveIt.

Installation

mkdir -p catkin_ws/src
cd catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/SnehalD14/panda_simulation.git
git clone https://github.com/SnehalD14/panda_moveit_config.git
git clone https://github.com/SnehalD14/franka_ros.git
git clone https://github.com/SnehalD14/realsense_gazebo_plugin.git
cd ..
sudo apt-get install libboost-filesystem-dev
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -y --skip-keys libfranka
cd ..

It is also important that you build the libfranka library from source and pass its directory to catkin_make when building this ROS package as described in this tutorial.

Build the catkin workspace and run the simulation:

catkin_make -j4 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DFranka_DIR:PATH=/path/to/libfranka/build
source devel/setup.bash
roslaunch panda_simulation simulation.launch

Ready state

The ready state of the robot can be set in Set Goal State tab in Moveit! Rviz. To modify the ready state or add another state, you will have to modify the _config/pandaarm.xacro file in panda_moveit_config

Spawning other objects

The simulation.launch spawns the bar_clamp but you can spawn any objects in the workspace. To spawn an object from the objects folder, you can type the following command in a new terminal

rosrun gazebo_ros spawn_model -file `pwd`/strawberry.urdf -urdf -x 0.4 -y 0 -z 1.1 -model strawberry

where pwd stands for present working directory

Replace the name of the urdf and the name of the model accordingly

Acknowledgement

This is a modified and extended version of the work done by Erdal Pekel