Planning & Decision Making - RO47005
16-01-2023

2022_Q2_PDM-Project

Project about global and local path planning through an environment with obstacles.

Group 027:

Annelouk van Mierlo: 4693746
Caspar Meijer: 4719298
Jurjen Scharringa: 4708652
Marijn de Rijk: 4888871

This project is made for the group assignment of the course RO47005 at the TU Delft. The aim for this project is to implement motion planning algorithms for a mobile manipulator, allowing it to navigate through a simulated environment and perform an action with the robot arm. The mobile manipulator that is used is the Albert Robot, provided in Max Spahn's package.

This file will contain the following contents:

• Content description
• Installation guide
  • Windows
  • Linux
• Run guide

Content description

The repository consists of the following files with corresponding descriptions:

• main.py: main file to run the simulation
• urdf_env_helpers.py: helper file to add obstacles and goals to the urfd environment
• global_path_planning.py: to compute the path for Albert using RRT*Smart
• local_path_planning.py: to follow the path found
• arm_kinematics.py: forward and inverse kinematics equations needed to control the robot arm
• transformations.py: contains functions to transform between global and robot coordinate frames

Installation guide

The following pre-requisites are required:

• Python >3.6, <3.10
• git

Then, the repository needs to be downloaded into a directory of choice:

git clone https://github.com/Capsar/2022_Q2_PDM-Project.git

Depending on the system that you are using follow the next steps.

Windows

• Install Microsoft Build Tools for version 14.0
• navigate to the folder in which you installed the repository: cd PATH\TO\REPOSITORY
• Create new conda environment: conda env create -f environment_win.yml
• Activate the new conda environment conda activate PDM_group27
• Install newer version of networkx: conda install networkx==2.8.8

Linux

• navigate to the folder in which you installed the repository: cd PATH/TO/REPOSITORY
• Create new conda environment: conda env create --name PDM_group27 -f environment_linux.yaml
• Activate the new conda environment conda activate PDM_group27
• Install newer version of networkx: conda install networkx==2.8.8

The manual installment of networkx is required because urdfpy has a restriction on the networkx version. We are not aware of any complications using the newer version of networkx in regards with urdfpy. If no errors have occurred, then the repository is correctly installed.

Run guide

The simulation can by running python3 main.py. Make sure you are within the "group27" folder, and that the PDM_group27 conda environment is activated.

Selecting environment

Multiple simulation environments for the robot to navigate are provided. Options are:

• 1: standard
• 2: second pre-made environment
• 3: third pre-made environment

Environmnets can be chosen by setting the --environment argument. To run the simulation in environment 3, for example, run python3 main.py --environment=3.

Arm only

There is also an option to skip the navigation of the mobile base and to look only at the robot arm path-following. To do this, set the arm_only parameter as follows:

python3 main.py --arm_only

Environment & Path pictures