Skeleton Tracker Teleoperation Package for Mobile Robot

Description: Skeleton Tracker ROS Package for Teleoperating a Mobile Robot

Submitted By: Patrick Goebel

Keywords: skeleton tracking, kinect, depth camera, teleoperation, pi robot, robotis, dynamixel, ax-12+, serializer, differential drive, mobile robot

Contents

  1. Overview
  2. Features
  3. Video
  4. How to Reproduce Your Entry
    1. Code to Checkout
    2. Configuration and Launching
    3. Hardware Used for this Demonstration
    4. Dependencies

Overview

The pi_tracker ROS package consists of four interrelated but independent ROS nodes that communicate over ROS topics and services:

  • skeleton_tracker for talking to the OpenNI skeleton tracking API and publishing the joint configuration and tf frames. Publishes joint names, positions, orientations and confidence values to the /skeleton topic. Based on Taylor Veltrop's teleop_kinect.cpp source at veltrobot_teleop.

  • tracker_command for detecting gesture commands and connecting to services that control the robot. Subscribes to the /skeleton topic and makes calls to services on other nodes. New gestures and commands can be added easily by defining simple functions over the joint configurations.

  • tracker_base_controller for controlling the movements of a wheeled robot base (either holonomic or non-holonomic). Subscribes to /skeleton and publishes to /cmd_vel.

  • tracker_joint_controller for teleoperating the joints of the robot including arms, torso and head. Subscribes to /skeleton and publishes to /cmd_joints.

Features

  • Automatically scales gestures to operator's body dimensions.
  • Easily add new gestures and commands by way of simple Python functions over the joint configurations.
  • Works with holonomic as well as non-holonomic robots. (Though my Rovio broke in the middle of testing so YMMV...)
  • Highly configurable YAML file allows customization for different robots.

  • Should work with any robot that can consume sensor_msgs/JointState messages to move the joints and geometry_msgs/Twist messages to move the base.

  • Can use either the feet or the hands to drive the base. (Demonstration video shows using the feet.)

Video

How to Reproduce Your Entry

Code to Checkout

  1. Install ros-cturtle-base

  2. Install ni

  3. Install the serializer package

  4. Install the robotis package

  5. Install the pi_lib package

  6. Install the pi_tracker package

Configuration and Launching

  1. Edit the included launch files and configuration files to match your robot. See the pi_tracker package for descriptions of all the parameters.

  2. In the current version of the pi_tracker package, two launch files are used:

    • skeleton.launch brings up the skeleton_tracker node (which includes a viewer) as well as the kinect frames nodes and the robot_state_publisher.

    • tracker.launch brings up the three other pi_tracker nodes: tracker_command, tracker_base_controller and tracker_joint_controller. If you are only controlling a base (such as when using with the Rovio), then you do not need the tracker_joint_controller, and vice versa.

    So a typical launch scenario would be: 

$ roslaunch pi_tracker skeleton.launch
$ roslaunch pi_tracker tracker.launch

You will then need to launch the controllers for your base hardware and servos. For example: 

$ roslaunch pi_tracker serializer.launch
$ roslaunch pi_tracker robotis.launch

Hardware Used for this Demonstration

  1. Microsoft Kinect RGB-D camera
  2. Dynamixel AX-12+ servos
  3. USB2Dynamixel controller
  4. Serializer microcontroller

Dependencies

Wiki: openni/Contests/ROS 3D/Skeleton Tracker Teleoperation Package for Mobile Robot (last edited 2011-03-27 23:59:03 by Patrick Goebel)

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