LoCoBot Descriptions

Overview

This package contains the URDFs and meshes for the robots in the Interbotix X-Series LoCoBot Family. The STL files for each robot are located in a unique folder inside the meshes directory. 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 ROS packages in the sub-repo reference this package to launch the robot description.

Structure

../_images/xslocobot_descriptions_flowchart_ros2.png

This package contains the xslocobot_description.launch 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' parameter to find all non-fixed joints and publish a 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 tf.
rviz - displays the virtual robot model using the transforms in the 'tf' topic.

Usage

This package contains two launch files:

xslocobot_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.

xslocobot_description.launch.py

To run this package, type the line below in a terminal. Note that the robot_model argument must be specified as the name of one of the four locobot models. For example, to launch a LoCoBot with a WidowX-200 arm, type:

$ ros2 launch interbotix_xslocobot_descriptions xslocobot_description.launch.py robot_model:=locobot_wx200 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 LoCoBot such as `locobot_base` or `locobot_wx250s`.	EnvVar(`INTERBOTIX_XSLOCOBOT_ROBOT_MODEL`)	`locobot_base`, `locobot_px100`, `locobot_wx200`, `locobot_wx250s`
robot_name	name of the robot (could be anything but defaults to `locobot`).	`locobot`
arm_model	the Interbotix Arm model on the LoCoBot; this should never be set manually but rather left to its default value.	PythonExpr('"mobile_" + "' + LaunchConfig(`robot_model`) + '".split("_")[1]')
use_lidar	if `true`, the RPLidar node is launched.	`false`	`true`, `false`
use_rviz	launches RViz if set to `true`.	`true`	`true`, `false`
rviz_frame	fixed frame in RViz; this should be changed to `map` or `odom` if mapping or using local odometry respectively.	LaunchConfig(`robot_name`) + '/base_link'
rvizconfig	file path to the config file RViz should load.	LocalVar('FindPackageShare(pkg= `interbotix_xslocobot_descriptions`) + 'rviz' + 'xslocobot_description.rviz'')
use_joint_pub	if `true`, launches the joint_state_publisher node.	`false`	`true`, `false`
use_joint_pub_gui	if `true`, launches the joint_state_publisher GUI.	`false`	`true`, `false`
rate	JointState topic publish rate in Hz.	`10`
source_list	list of joint state topics that should be merged together.	'[]'
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_type	the base type of the LoCoBot.	EnvVar(`INTERBOTIX_XSLOCOBOT_BASE_TYPE`)	`kobuki`, `create3`
use_gripper	if `true`, the default gripper is included in the `robot_description`; 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`; if `false`, it is left out; set to `true` if using the AR tag mount in your project.	`true`	`true`, `false`
show_gripper_bar	if `true`, the gripper_bar link is included in the `robot_description`; 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`; if `false`, the gripper finger links are not loaded. Set to `false` if you have custom gripper fingers.	`true`	`true`, `false`
show_lidar	if `true`, the lidar is included in the `robot_description`; only set to `true` if you purchased a lidar with your locobot.	`false`	`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` 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_xslocobot_descriptions`) + 'urdf' + 'locobot.urdf.xacro'') + ' ' + 'arm_model:=' + LaunchConfig(`arm_model`) + ' ' + 'robot_name:=' + LaunchConfig(`robot_name`) + ' ' + 'base_model:=' + LaunchConfig(`base_type`) + ' ' + 'robot_model:=' + LaunchConfig(`robot_model`) + ' ' + '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`) + ' ' + 'show_lidar:=' + LaunchConfig(`show_lidar`) + ' ' + 'external_urdf_loc:=' + LaunchConfig(`external_urdf_loc`) + ' ' + 'hardware_type:=' + LaunchConfig(`hardware_type`) + ' ')

remote_view.launch.py

This launch file should be run on a networked ROS computer to visualize the robot in RViz in real time. See more in the ROS 2 Interface Quickstart.

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

$ ros2 launch interbotix_xslocobot_descriptions remote_view.launch.py

Argument	Description	Default
robot_name	name of the robot (could be anything but defaults to `locobot`).	`locobot`
rviz_frame	fixed frame in RViz; this should be changed to `map` or `odom` if mapping or using local odometry respectively.	LaunchConfig(`robot_name`) + '/base_footprint'
rvizconfig	file path to the config file RViz should load.	LocalVar('FindPackageShare(pkg= `interbotix_xslocobot_descriptions`) + 'rviz' + 'xslocobot_description.rviz'')