Ability Hand ROS2

ROS2 Humble implementation for integrating Ability Hand Python Wrapper with ROS2. For ROS2 Jazzy, please use the jazzy branch.

Regular Setup

Install ROS2 Humble (Ubuntu 22.04)

If using Ubuntu 22.04, you can follow the install instructions . If using Ubuntu 23.04 or higher or Windows, Docker is suggested.

It is recommended to use the included localhost only cyclonedds.xml config file. To install cyclone dds and use the included config file run

./cyclone_dds_install.sh

Install Ability Hand Python Wrapper

Follow the instructions here to install the Python Ability Hand Wrapper

Built ROS2 Package

From ability-hand-ros2 directory build using colcon build and source using source ./install/setup.bash

Docker Setup

Choose which nodes you wish to launch using Docker by modifying entrypoint.sh

Linux

Docker installation instructions for various Linux distributions can be found here. Ensure you do the post installation instructions

Navigate to the Docker directory of this repo and enter the following command

xhost + && docker compose up

Topics

You can receive motor feedback on the following topics:

/ability_hand/right/feedback/velocity
/ability_hand/right/feedback/position
/ability_hand/right/feedback/current

Using the following indices
[index, middle, ring, pinky, thumb flexor, thumb rotator]

You can receive touch sensor feedback as well, with 6 touch sensors per finger via the topic:

/ability_hand/right/feedback/touch

To control the hand publish on any of the following topics:

/ability_hand/right/target/velocity
/ability_hand/right/target/position
/ability_hand/right/target/current
/ability_hand/right/target/duty

using an ah_messages/msg/Digits.msg message, for example:

ros2 topic pub -r 200 /ability_hand/right/target/position ah_messages/msg/Digits "{reply_mode: 0, data: [0.0, 90.0, 90.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]}"

Examples

To start the Ability Hand Node with an automatic write thread, use:

colcon build && source ./install/setup.bash
ros2 launch ah_ros_py ah_node.launch.py write_thread:=True

You can change the hand's position using ros2 topic pub --once /ability_hand/right/target/position ah_messages/msg/Digits "{reply_mode: 0, data: [0.0, 90.0, 90.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]}"

Since the write thread is running, you only have to publish the message once. In most typical cases, you will set write_thread:=False and have another ROS node publishing to the hand at least every 0.3 seconds / 5Hz. Ideally, you publish at least 200Hz for smoother control.

For example, run the hand wave node without a write thread:

ros2 launch ah_ros_py hand_wave.launch.py

If you enable the js_publisher argument in the ah_node.launch.py launch file it will publish to /joint_states_ah which the joint state publisher in the urdf_launch package subscribes to. This allows you to visualise the joint states and URDF using:

ros2 launch ah_ros_py hand_wave.launch.py js_publisher:=True
ros2 launch urdf_launch display.launch.py

If you would like to visualize the FSR touch sensors in RVIZ launch the FSR marker node.

ros2 run ah_ros_py fsr_marker_node