Arm Descriptions

Overview

This package contains the URDFs and meshes for the many X-Series Interbotix Arms. The STL files for each robot are located in a unique folder inside the meshes directory. Also in the ‘meshes’ directory is the interbotix_black.png picture. The appearance and texture of the robots come from this picture. Next, the URDFs for the robot are located in the urdf directory. They are written in ‘xacro’ format so that users have the ability to customize what parts of the URDF get loaded to the parameter server (see the ‘Usage’ section below for details). Note that all the other Interbotix X-Series Arms core ROS packages in the sub-repo reference this package to launch the robot description.

Structure

../_images/xsarm_descriptions_flowchart_ros2.png

This package contains the xsarm_description.launch.py file responsible for loading parts or all of the robot model. It launches up to four nodes as described below:

joint_state_publisher - responsible for parsing the robot_description topic to find all non-fixed joints and publish a sensor_msgs/msg/JointState message with those joints defined.
joint_state_publisher_gui - does the same thing as the joint_state_publisher node but with a GUI that allows a user to easily manipulate the joints.
robot_state_publisher - uses the URDF specified by the parameter robot_description and the joint positions from the joint_states topic to calculate the forward kinematics of the robot and publish the results via the tf and tf_static topics.
rviz - displays the virtual robot model using the transforms in the tf topic.

Usage

This package contains two launch files:

xsarm_description.launch.py - should be included in any launch tree in which you want to load and parse the URDF, or can be launched to view any robot model’s URDF in RViz.
remote_view.launch.py which simply loads RViz in the proper namespace.

xsarm_description.launch.py

To run this launch file, enter the command below in a terminal. Note that the robot_model argument must be specified as the name of one of the URDF files located in the urdf directory (excluding the ‘.urdf.xacro’ part). For example, to launch the ReactorX-150 arm, type:

$ ros2 launch interbotix_xsarm_descriptions xsarm_description.launch.py robot_model:=rx150 use_joint_pub_gui:=true

This is the bare minimum needed to get up and running. Take a look at the table below to see how to further customize with other launch file arguments.

Argument	Description	Default	Choices
robot_model	model type of the Interbotix Arm such as `wx200` or `rx150`.		`px100`, `px150`, `rx150`, `rx200`, `wx200`, `wx250`, `wx250s`, `vx250`, `vx300`, `vx300s`, `mobile_px100`, `mobile_wx200`, `mobile_wx250s`
robot_name	name of the robot (typically equal to `robot_model`, but could be anything).	LaunchConfig(`robot_model`)
use_rviz	launches RViz if set to `true`.	`true`	`true`, `false`
use_joint_pub	launches the joint_state_publisher node.	`false`	`true`, `false`
use_joint_pub_gui	launches the joint_state_publisher GUI.	`false`	`true`, `false`
rvizconfig	file path to the config file RViz should load.	LocalVar(‘FindPackageShare(pkg= `interbotix_xsarm_descriptions`) + ‘rviz’ + ‘xsarm_description.rviz’’)
use_sim_time	tells ROS nodes asking for time to get the Gazebo-published simulation time, published over the ROS topic /clock.	`false`	`true`, `false`
base_link_frame	name of the ‘root’ link on the arm; typically `base_link`, but can be changed if attaching the arm to a mobile base that already has a `base_link` frame.	`base_link`
use_gripper	if `true`, the default gripper is included in the `robot_description` parameter; if `false`, it is left out; set to `false` if not using the default gripper.	`true`	`true`, `false`
show_ar_tag	if `true`, the AR tag mount is included in the `robot_description` parameter; if `false`, it is left out; set to `true` if using the AR tag mount in your project.	`false`	`true`, `false`
show_gripper_bar	if `true`, the gripper_bar link is included in the `robot_description` parameter; if `false`, the gripper_bar and finger links are not loaded. Set to `false` if you have a custom gripper attachment.	`true`	`true`, `false`
show_gripper_fingers	if true, the gripper fingers are included in the `robot_description` parameter; if `false`, the gripper finger links are not loaded. Set to `false` if you have custom gripper fingers.	`true`	`true`, `false`
use_world_frame	set this to `true` if you would like to load a ‘world’ frame to the `robot_description` parameter which is located exactly at the ‘base_link’ frame of the robot; if using multiple robots or if you would like to attach the ‘base_link’ frame of the robot to a different frame, set this to `false`.	`true`	`true`, `false`
external_urdf_loc	the file path to the custom urdf.xacro file that you would like to include in the Interbotix robot’s urdf.xacro file.	‘’
hardware_type	configures the `robot_description` parameter to use the actual hardware, fake hardware, or hardware simulated in Gazebo.	`actual`	`actual`, `fake`, `gz_classic`
robot_description	URDF of the robot; this is typically generated by the xacro command.	Command(FindExec(`xacro`) + ‘ ‘ + LocalVar(‘FindPackageShare(pkg= `interbotix_xsarm_descriptions`) + ‘urdf’ + LaunchConfig(`robot_model`)’) + ‘.urdf.xacro ‘ + ‘robot_name:=’ + LaunchConfig(`robot_name`) + ‘ ‘ + ‘base_link_frame:=’ + LaunchConfig(`base_link_frame`) + ‘ ‘ + ‘use_gripper:=’ + LaunchConfig(`use_gripper`) + ‘ ‘ + ‘show_ar_tag:=’ + LaunchConfig(`show_ar_tag`) + ‘ ‘ + ‘show_gripper_bar:=’ + LaunchConfig(`show_gripper_bar`) + ‘ ‘ + ‘show_gripper_fingers:=’ + LaunchConfig(`show_gripper_fingers`) + ‘ ‘ + ‘use_world_frame:=’ + LaunchConfig(`use_world_frame`) + ‘ ‘ + ‘external_urdf_loc:=’ + LaunchConfig(`external_urdf_loc`) + ‘ ‘ + ‘hardware_type:=’ + LaunchConfig(`hardware_type`) + ‘ ‘)

remote_view.launch.py

To run this launch file, enter the command below in a terminal.

$ ros2 launch interbotix_xsarm_descriptions remote_view.launch.py robot_model:=rx150 use_joint_pub_gui:=true