Cartesian Path Planner Plug-In for MoveIt

[Risto Kojcev]

Dear ROS community,

My name is Risto Kojcev and this year I was participating in the Google
Summer of Code directed by Open Source Robotics Foundation and ROS
Industrial. The goal of my project was to develop Cartesian Path Planner
Plug-In for MoveIt.

I am happy to share with you the relevant blog post
<http://rosindustrial.org/news/2014/9/5/cartesian-path-planner-plug-in-for-moveit>
presenting
the final results of this project.

I would be happy to hear your opinion about the project and suggestions for
future development.

I would like to thank everyone in the ROS community for the great
experience during the duration of GSoC and the valuable experience I have
gained during this time. I hope that this work will find its place in many
future applications.

Best regards,

Risto Kojcev

[Risto Kojcev]

Hi Frantisek,

Sorry for the late reply, I didnt catch this message until now.
Thank you very much for trying out the plugin. I am very happy that you
find it useful for your applications.

Regarding the issue you have unfortunately during the development process I
haven't considered the possibility of using this plugin in dual arm
configurations. The MoveIt group name, which is currently set as
"manipulator" is hard coded in the current version of the plugin.

I think expanding the plugin would be very useful, but it could take some
time. I am willing and would be happy to take a look at that and I have few
design suggestions which I would like to propose in order to proceed with
this expansion and of course hear community's opinion about them.
1. We could consider each arm to have the same features as the current
plugin but in the same time we have to provide separate Way-Point
add/substract for each arm(different color coding and labeling as well as
when they are outside each corresponding arm IK solution). For example in a
dual arm configuration we could have two user interaction markers which
could be labeled corresponding to the name set during the MoveIt
configuration of the package.
2. All the way points corresponding to one robot arm should be devised
into groups in the TreeView.
3. We should generate Cartesian paths that avoid collision between the
two robots and also let the user know when a certain way point from the
first robot collides with the Cartesian path of the other robot arm.
4. Execution of Cartesian paths. We should also consider at what point
should each arm Cartesian path should be executed. For example different
applications might not require simultaneous execution of the both arms
during the Cartesian path. For simplicity I would propose the first
development goal to be simultanious execution of both Cartesian path for
the two arms.

These are some of the things I could quickly think about and it would be
great to hear the opinions of the community and open a discussion.

If there is an interested in proceeding with this I would be happy to do
it, also some points to some dual arm MoveIt configuration packages would
be useful in order to develop and test this expansion.

Thanks a lot.

Risto

Hi Risto
Great job with your Cartesian Planner plugin, it is exactly the tool I was
missing in RViz. I have tested it a little bit and found one issue I would
like to ask you.
Your plugin works fine but only with planning group "manipulator". Is
there any way how to use your plugin for dual arm robots ( for instance
"r1" and "r2" groups) or it is strictly limited to single arm
configurations?
Thanks
Frantisek Durovsky