Allegro Hand

Tested with ROS Kinetic, Gazebo 9, ODE and DART

Install allegro-hand hardware

1. Clone the directory into the src folder of your catkin workspace.
2. cd to the allegro-hand directory and run

   sudo chmod +x install_dependencies.sh
   sudo ./install_dependencies.sh

   With this setup you will not be able to use gazebo the simulator. The standard "apt-get install gazebo" uses by default the ode physics engine which is unable to handle the small inertia matrices of the hand whilst maintaining real time performance.

If you want to use gazebo (running with a real time factor) you will need the dart physics engine gazebo plugin which requires compiling gazebo from source. Follow the steps outlined in Install allegro-hand gazebo. If you don't want to use the gazebo simulator, you are done, just compile your catkin workspace.

Install allegro-hand gazebo

1. The script install_gazebo_source.sh will purge all your gazebo libraries, clone gazebo from the orfoundation, build and install it with dart.

   sudo chmod +x install_gazebo_source.sh
   sudo ./install_gazebo_source.sh

2. Delete the CATKIN_IGNORE file from the ahand_gazebo folder
3. You can now build your catkin workspace

Running on the hardware

roslaunch ahand hw.launch

Running on the gazebo simulator

roslaunch ahand sim.launch

Troubleshooting

If you get the following error:

1555577332.132839: ERROR: failed to scan directory (errno=2) '/sys/class/pcan'

it is most likely that the pcan dirver was incorrectly installed. If the /proc/pcan file does not exist run the following:

cd allegro-hand/peak-linux-driver
make clean
make NET=NO PCC=NO
sudo make install
sudo modprobe pcan 1> /dev/null

then check if the pcan file exists:

cat /proc/pcan

if it does then this error is likely to be fixed.