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Package Summary

Trep: Mechanical Simulation and Optimal Control Software

Package Summary

Trep: Mechanical Simulation and Optimal Control Software

Package Summary

Trep: Mechanical Simulation and Optimal Control Software

Overview

Trep is a Python module for modeling articulated rigid body mechanical systems in generalized coordinates. Trep supports basic simulation but it is primarily designed to serve as a calculation engine for analysis and optimal control algorithms that require 1st and 2nd derivatives of the system’s dynamics.

Full documentation is available at http://nxr.northwestern.edu/trep.

ROS Tools

Trep currently provides two features for usage in ROS packages - A URDF import tool and an extended MidpointVI class.

URDF Import Tool

Trep can create a system model using certain tags from the URDF XML specification. The following tags are supported:

  • Link - name
    • Inertial
      • origin
      • mass
      • inertia (only ixx,iyy,izz supported, off-axes should be zero)
  • Joint - name, type: fixed, continuous, prismatic (no joint limits)
    • origin
    • parent
    • child
    • dynamics (damping only)

Additionally, one extra tag is supported on the Joint tag. Specifying kinematic='True' creates a kinematic configuration variable in trep for that joint.

An example of a system created from a URDF on the parameter server is:

   1 import rospy
   2 import trep.ros as rostrep
   3 
   4 system = rostrep.import_urdf(rospy.get_param('robot_description'))

Additionally, import_urdf can import the URDF onto an existing system definition and can add a prefix to all of the frames and joints created from the URDF using the following syntax:

   1 system = rostrep.import_urdf(rospy.get_param('robot_description'), 
   2          system=prev_system, prefix='new-prefix')

ROSMidpointVI Integrator

The ROSMidpointVI class extends the MidpointVI class available in trep. This class automatically publishes all frames imported from the URDF to the /tf topic every time ROSMidpointVI.step() is called.

Example Package

An example package called trep_urdf_demo is available at https://github.com/MurpheyLab/trep_urdf_demo. This package has two demos which can be called from launch files. After cloning the package to your ROS workspace, run the following command:

  • RRbot simulator:

     roslaunch trep_urdf_demo rrbot.launch
  • Interactive marionette simulator:

     roslaunch trep_urdf_demo puppet.launch

Wiki: python_trep (last edited 2015-05-24 21:36:06 by AndyWilson)