[ros-users] Joint controller manager

[Willy Lambert]

2013/1/28 Adolfo Rodríguez Tsouroukdissian <adolfo.rodriguez at pal-robotics.com>:
> Hello ROS and Orocos users,
>
> This is a call for feedback. I'm currently working on a "joint controller
> manager", that is, a component that manages joint resources and exposes them
> to control. For those familiar with the pr2_controller_manager, this would
> provide similar functionality and interfaces, while relaxing some
> constraints to allow easy porting to different hardware platforms. Exposing
> hardware to control (and realtime control in particular) is still a big
> hurdle, and it would be very desirable to make this at least an order of
> magnitude easier. Once a minimal set of controller interfaces are made
> available for a given platform (eg. mobile base controller, spline
> interpolator, ...), a truckload of higher-level functionality becomes
> available.
>
> At the moment I have an existing in-house solution that from a ROS API point
> of view looks pretty much like a pr2_controller_manager, and a design of
> where I'd like things to go, which is attached to this message in pdf form.
> As a next step I was planning on setting up a public repo and port the
> existing design from Orocos 1.x to Orocos 2.x, which adds the expressivity
> needed to address the missing features. But before that, I'd like to make a
> pause and ask for some feedback.
>
> - Is there interest in giving this topic a dedicated discussion place, like
> a mailing list or a ROS special interest group?.
>
> - If you take a look at the attached design, please be critic about it. What
> would you add or remove?, what would you do differently?.
>
> - What can you not accomplish (or have had trouble accomplishing) with the
> tools you or your team have used so far?.
>
> Finally, I'd like to be aware of any active and similarly scoped initiative,
> so please let me know if you're working on the subject. Late last week I
> found out almost by chance about the yet undocumented ros_control [1]
> repository, which deferred the writing of this email a day so I could
> familiarize with it. Its scope is very much aligned with my current
> objectives, as it consists of a library offering functionality similar to
> that of the pr2_controller_manager that can be adapted to other robot
> platforms. I'm looking forward to sharing opinions and use cases with all
> interested parties, and if possible map interest overlaps to common code.
> Some questions that come to my mind after reviewing the code in [1]:
>
> - Is it possible to have a controller with multiple interfaces (eg. send
> position + velocity + effort commands)?.
>
> - If I understand correctly, interfaces are limited by design to position,
> velocity and effort, and adding a new one (fancy example: stiffness) is not
> possible, correct?.
>
> - Is it possible to chain controllers as in the attached figure
> (r_arm_follow_joint_traj + r_arm_pid_controller) from configuration files,
> ie. without writing code?.
>
> - Controllers running at lower frequency than the manager need to implement
> this by doing work only one out of every n cycles, as separate controller
> threads are not supported, correct?.
>
> - Is there any work on decoupling the more common "workhorse" controllers
> out of the pr2_controller_manager infrastructure (eg. a couple of mobile
> base implementations, the FollowJointTrtajectory action)?. I've already
> spent some time factoring out the spline splicing and interpolation code
> from the FollowJointTrtajectory action, and was planning on writing some
> unit tests on it. If not, I can also make this available once the cleanup is
> complete.
>
> That's it for now, thanks for reading.
>
> [1] https://github.com/willowgarage/ros_control
>
> --
> Adolfo Rodríguez Tsouroukdissian
> Senior robotics engineer
> adolfo.rodriguez at pal-robotics.com
> http://www.pal-robotics.com
>
> PAL ROBOTICS S.L
> c/ Pujades 77-79, 4º4ª
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> Skype: adolfo.pal-robotics
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I don't have anything to say on the subject, but your pdf is really
lovely. How do you do this ?