Modify the plugin to publish FT sensor measures to a YARP port

[GiacomoBisio]

Dealing with YARP seems to be more difficult. Can you give us some advices in order to understand where we can start from?

[traversaro]

Basically YARP is composed by two main parts, that are relatively independent even if they are part of the same project:

• YARP ports
• YARP devices

The way to abstract hardward functionality in a reusable way (also between real robots and simulated robots) is YARP devices, however as a first step you could get used to YARP ports. I think you can start trying an example such as https://yarp.it/latest/note_ports.html, and then to modify your force torque plugin to publish the FT sensor measure on a YARP port.

[lucapa17]

I think you can start trying an example such as https://yarp.it/latest/note_ports.html, and then to modify your force torque plugin to publish the FT sensor measure on a YARP port.

We should have done it (https://github.com/robotology/study-gazebo-garden-yarp-plugins/commit/7b727e1613f2259a4e6a6c760c6e807d7d632ecd). We proceed in this way in order to see the FT measures to a YARP port:

• 1st terminal:

  yarp server

• 2nd terminal:

  gz sim model.sdf

• 3rd terminal:

  yarp name list

  To list all the YARP ports open. We should see the port /force_torque, that is the one opened by the plugin. We can then read the measures from the the /force_torquewith the command:

  yarp read ... /force_torque

  writing the name of a new the port instead of ... .

In particular, the output is:

"2.776000   Force: 0.000000 0.000000 98.000000   Torque: 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000"
...

[lucapa17]

The way to abstract hardward functionality in a reusable way (also between real robots and simulated robots) is YARP devices.

In order to move on, how should we proceed?

[traversaro]

The way to abstract hardward functionality in a reusable way (also between real robots and simulated robots) is YARP devices.

In order to move on, how should we proceed?

I guess it is useful to get a bit used to YARP devices. I opened a device to point to some material and exercises to do: https://github.com/robotology/study-gazebo-garden-yarp-plugins/issues/8 . Once you do that, you will have familiarized more with the concepts of "YARP devices", and you will be ready to implement a YARP device that expose the FT sensors data.

[GiacomoBisio]

Now that we know something more about YARP devices (#8), what do you suggest to do? We thought to start looking at https://github.com/robotology/gazebo-yarp-plugins/tree/master/plugins/forcetorque and taking piece by piece different parts of code and adapt them to work in Gazebo Garden. Maybe this is not the best way to proceed, let us know what you think about it.

[traversaro]

Probably it is worth doing a meeting to decide the next steps as they may not be trivial to plan/implement, let me contact @randaz81 and try to decide on a time.

[GiacomoBisio]

Probably it is worth doing a meeting to decide the next steps as they may not be trivial to plan/implement, let me contact @randaz81 and try to decide on a time.

Ok thank you. We are available on this wednesday (except from 10 to 12) and on this friday (except from 10 to 12). Otherwise, next week we'll be always available.