Vector + UR5 Python Node Example

An example of programatic control of ROS+MoveIt with a Python node. This node is an addition to the simulation of a Vector Mobile Robot + UR5 robot arm described here:

https://github.com/nickovaras/vector

The node will make the Vector mobile robot navigate from one location on the map to another, and on each location it will move the robot to a named joint configuration from the SRDF. Unlike the C++ MoveGroup class, the Python MoveGroupCommander class seems to lack a method to directly read (named robot positions) saved on the robot's SRDF, so the ROS package srdfdom (http://wiki.ros.org/srdfdom) is used to parse the robots SRDF and obtain the named arm configuration.

Setup Instructions:

First, it is essential that you overlay the workspaces, so if you built the repository of the link above, start a new terminal and do:

cd ~/vector_ws
source devel/setup.bash

And ON THE SAME TERMINAL do:

mkdir ~/mobmanip_ws
cd ~/mobmanip_ws
mkdir src
cd src
catkin_init_workspace
git clone https://github.com/nickovaras/Vector_UR5.git
cd..
catkin_make
source devel/setup.bash

It is essential that you make the Python script executable. Go to the directory where the file is located and do:

chmod +x mobile_manipulation.py

To use, after bringing all other components described in https://github.com/nickovaras/vector , start node with

rosrun mobile_manipulation mobile_manipulation.py