Unable to run in indigo

[TimAdamson21]

I have cloned your package, and tried to run it on my own machine, but am getting errors due to dependencies on packages not supported in indigo. Am I missing something, or did the package recently break?

[pgrice]

There are quite a few packages in this repository. Can you please specify which one(s) you are interested in?

[TimAdamson21]

I am trying to run assistive_teleop. Is it possible to run in sim, or only on a real pr2?

[pgrice]

It should be possible to run it on a on either a Gazebo simulation (though I haven't done this recently) or a real PR2, though some of the topics (specifically for the Kinect, iirc) may need to be changed. We are currently using this with a real PR2 on Indigo. What packages are you unable to find in indigo?

[TimAdamson21]

I was getting some errors saying that I needed kinematics_msgs, which seemed to be a dependency of one of assistive_teleop's dependencies.

[pgrice]

Yes, kinematics_msgs was dropped after groovy, and has been removed/replaced in more recent versions. The necessary packages should be up to date. Please make sure you've checked out the indigo-devel branch for this and any other source repositories (they may default to master).

[TimAdamson21]

The assistive_teleop launch file seems to require hrl_haptic_mpc , which is not supported in indigo.

[TimAdamson21]

And should I follow the instructions on the ROS wiki for launching assistive_teleop, even though those are last indexed for fuerte?

[pgrice]

We have an up-to-date version of hrl_haptic_mpc on an internal repository. I will add a copy of that branch to the public repo, hopefully tomorrow.

The wiki page is old, and I may find time to update it, but the information is still mostly correct. You likely have a different Kinect launch file (and may need to adjust Kinect-related topics accordingly), but assistive_teleop.launch will launch the original version of the web interface. I've also developed a more recent version, which can be launched with vci.launch. This second (vci.launch and http://PR2HOSTNAME:8008/assistive_teleop/vci.html) is likely preferable, but I believe both work.

[pgrice]

I just pushed a new indigo-devel branch of the hrl-haptic-manip repository from our internal repo.

[TimAdamson21]

Thank you so much! I will try running the vci.launch today, and can let you know how it goes.

[TimAdamson21]

I tried adding the hrl_haptic_mpc package today, but it does not seem to be catkinized. Is it using rosbuild?

[pgrice]

My apologies. A number of files got missed (including the package.xml's) when I copied over the code for release earlier. You should be able to pull the indigo-devel branch for haptic_mpc and build through catkin now.

[TimAdamson21]

When I try to run "roslaunch assistive_teleop vci.launch", I get a slew of errors. I have copied the output into a file which I have attached to this comment. Any suggestions on how I should go about fixing the errors? vci_error.txt

[kavikode]

Thanks Dr. Phil! Tim and I are working together this summer with Dr. Maya Cakmak. Congratulations again on your dissertation!

[pgrice]

Many of the errors are associated with the fabric-based tactile sensors, which I imagine you do not have on your robot. You can remove these from the launch files by commenting out the 2 includes under in vci.launch (ll. 75-76). That will clear up many of the errors.

The errors with the < ...urdf_parser_py.urdf.Transmission> are related to an issue in either urdy_parser_py or the PR2 URDF itself (which may not properly conform to more recent standards), though it's unclear which. Our solution here has been to replace the core of urdf_parser_py with the old files from hydro [This is an ugly hack, but solves this problem. The community may appreciate someone taking the time to dig to the bottom of this and find a proper solution].

Checkout the hydro-devel branch from [https://github.com/ros/urdfdom/tree/hydro-devel], and in /opt/ros/indigo/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/urdf_parser_py/ replace sdf.py, urdf.py, xml_reflection/basics.py, and xml_reflection/core.py with the same files from the urdf_parser_py hydro-devel branch.

I think those two issues likely account for most of the errors you're seeing, and if not, addressing them will certainly make it easier to see what issues remain.

[TimAdamson21]

It's working! How fast do the arms normally move, because they seem to be moving quite slowly right now, even when the step size is on large?

[pgrice]

That's a side-effect of the MPC arm controller. It is designed to be run with low-stiffness gains on the low-level arm controllers. Before running the launch file (once only), run hrl_haptic_mpc/scripts/change_gains_pr2.sh. The MPC controller loads these gains when it starts, and the motion velocity depends on the stiffness. Once the gains are set, they'll remain in place until the low-level controllers (r/l_arm_controller) are restarted, usually with a robot start.

Glad to hear it's working. Is this in simulation, or on your real PR2?

[TimAdamson21]

It's on our real PR2. I would say we can probably close this issue now. Thank you for all your help!