This i my attempt to get the panda_moveit_config package ready for ROS Noetic. It is related to moveit#74, but I started over from scratch to see which components are really required.

Maybe in the future it is helpfull to add a MIGRATION.md file like is done in the moveit_repository and a PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md. See #55 for a example.

Migration guide

Below, I tried to explain all the steps that were performed in creating this config file. This config file is meant to be used with the noetic branch of the ros-planning/moveit_tutorials repository.

1. Create the initial panda robot configuration using the moveit_setup_assistant (see 8566b70). In this branch, tree/82378877879f7d40727819b1c3345eeb4308d98b was used. Similar to WIP: Generated using the latest features from MoveIt moveit/panda_moveit_config#74 I changed some posed to prevent self collisions.

2. I modified the panda.srdf file that is created by the moveit_setup_assistant such that we can programmatically enable the gripper (see f0c2bca). This needs to be done, since the moveit_setup_assistant currently doesn't propagate xacro arguments you supply to the urdf.xacro file (see this issue). We need to manually add a way to enable or disable the gripper. This can be done by creating a panda.srdf.xacro file.

3. I replaced the sensor_3d.yaml with the example files in the perception_pipeline tutorial. Also edit the sensor_manager.launch.xml file to point to the right configuration files (see 2aaa01d).

4. I added the rviz_tutorial flag. While doing this, make sure you also copy the moveit.rviz and empty.rviz files from the previous ROS version. Also set the moveit_visual_tools as a dependency (see 1d55c98).

5. Similar to df0cbd8 I had to disable the collision checking between joint{5, 6} and joint8 since the new collision geometries that were added to https://github.com/frankaemika/franka_ros/releases/tag/0.8.0 are to coarse (see aa24fae). This should be fixed upstream by for example by improving the collision geometries or by giving users the ability to use meshes instead (Adds 'use_collision_mesh' arg to the robot description frankaemika/franka_ros#154).

6. I added the panda_control_moveit_rviz.launch which can be used to control the real robot (see 36d7c9f).

7. I added the TrajOpt files that were found in the melodic-devel branch to the repository ( see bc2bbc7 and 88fb278).

8. I added the STOMP files that were found in the melodic-devel branch to the repository ( see 133d524) .

9. I updated the join_limits.yaml file that was created by the MSA to enforce jerk limits. This was done by adding acceleration limits since MoveIt does not yet support jerk limits (see 89d9b44).

10. I added the files of the LERP planner that is created in the creating-moveit-plugins tutorial (see 85756cd). These files were copied from the melodic-devel branch.

11. I added the demo_chomp.launch and ompl-chomp_planning_pipeline.launch.xml files needed by the chomp_planner_tutorial tutorial. Further I also updating the chomp config file to the one found in the melodic-devel branch (see 4c390ac and c2ccca2).

12. I added the demo_gazebo.launch launch file which spawns a simulated Panda robot in Gazebo. This launch file uses the new franka_gazebo package that was introduced in franka_ros v0.8.1.

Files that were manually created

Config folder

• panda.srdf.xacro
• hand.xacro
• panda_arm.xacro
• lerp_planning.yaml
• stomp_planning.yaml
• trajopt_planning.yaml
• panda_controllers.yaml
• panda_gripper_controllers.yaml

launch

• demo_stomp.launch (Was not present in the melodic-devel branch).
• demo_chomp.launch (Not used in the moveit_tutorials).
• demo_lerp.launch (Used in the moveit_tutorials).
• lerp_planning_pipeline.launch.xml
• ompl-chomp_planning_pipeline.launch.xml
• panda_gripper_moveit_controller_manager.launch.xml
• run_benchmark_trajopt.launch
• stomp_planning_pipeline.launch.xml
• trajopt_planning_pipeline.launch.xml

Pull requests that first need to be reviewed

Below are some pull request that I did not yet merge since they first need to be reviewed by the @ros-planning team.

• Remaps move_group 'joint_states' to 'joint_states_desired' #54 I did not yet merge this pull request since I'm not sure if this change is still required with franka_ros v0.8.0. Please let me know if somebody knows the answer. I will try to perform some tests on the real robot later to find out.

Upstream pull requests that need to be merged

The pull requests below were created on the frankaemika/franka_ros repository and need to be merged before the Noetic version of the ros-planning/panda_moveit_config can be released.

• Moves finger collision geometries to the finger joints frankaemika/franka_ros#151 needs to be merged to get rid of the Link panda_rightfinger has visual geometry but no collision geometry. Collision geometry will be left empty. Fix your URDF file by explicitly specifying collision geometry. warning.
• Adds position and velocity motion generators to FrankaHWSim frankaemika/franka_ros#181 needs to be merged. Such that we can also use the joint_position/JointTrajectoryController controller in the gazebo simulation. We can also of course switch to a joint_effort/JointTrajectoryController but then we need to tune the PID gains (see comment above).
• Fixes franka_gripper_sim GripperCommand action frankaemika/franka_ros#173 needs to be merged before MoveIt can correctly control the gripper.
• If Adds 'use_collision_mesh' arg to the robot description frankaemika/franka_ros#154 is merged, we can use use_mesh to improve the self-collision behaviour. aa24fae is then not needed anymore.

Changes that need to be made to the moveit_tutorials

• setup_assistant_tutorial.html:
  • Should have updated pictures (i.e. menu order was changed).
  • Panda description file was changed to be /franka_description/robots/panda.urdf.xacro the hand is now enabled by using the hand:=true xacro parameter.
  • The documentation should mention the panda_finger_joint2 as the passive joint.
  • The virtual joint doesn't appear to be needed in the panda_arm group. Maybe remove it as it will cause errors when using a gazebo simulation?
• Maybe the [panda_control_moveit_rviz.launch] file should be documented in the documentation.
• Fix access to panda urdf moveit/moveit_tutorials#667
• The demo_chomp.launch file was added in, but this file is not used in the moveit_tutorials.
• The lerp planner documentation talks about a lerp_example.launch file but this file is not included I think this should be changed to refer the demo_lerp.launch file.

Possible moveit setup_assistant pull requests

Here I documented several improvements that can made to the setup_assistant.

• Add the ability to use action services as controllers.
  

  panda_moveit_config/config/panda_gripper_moveit_controllers.yaml

  Lines 14 to 20 in 47073b3

  	- name: franka_gripper
  	action_ns: gripper_action
  	type: GripperCommand
  	default: true
  	joints:
  	- panda_finger_joint1
  	- panda_finger_joint2

• Maybe we should move controllers_list from ros_controllers.yaml into its own file as these are only needed for MoveIt while the settings in the ros_controllers.yaml file should only contain settings related to the ROS control (see Adds the panda_control_moveit_rviz launch file #45 for a example).

• The template code that loads the robot_description in the should be changed from
  

  panda_moveit_config/launch/gazebo.launch

  Line 15 in c9640d9

  <param name="robot_description" textfile="$(arg urdf_path)" />

  
  to

  <param name="robot_description" command="$(find xacro)/xacro $(arg urdf_path) hand:=$(arg load_gripper) gazebo:=true"/>

  if a xacro file was given by the user.

• As the https://github.com/frankaemika/franka_ros was changed, the code that creates the gazebo simulation should be adjusted. The https://github.com/frankaemika/franka_ros repo now includes all the components to create a gazebo simulation, but loads the robot onto the /panda namespace. As a result, the current templates don't work anymore. We should apply the changes found in Fixes the gazebo simulation Fixes the gazebo simulation #40 to the templates in the MSA.

• The STOMP templates should be added to the MSA.

• The stomp_demo and chomp_demo files are not created by the MSA.

• The ompl-chomp_planning_pipeline.launch.xml should be added to the MSA (see https://ros-planning.github.io/moveit_tutorials/doc/chomp_planner/chomp_planner_tutorial.html#using-chomp-as-a-post-processor-for-ompl).

  We should therefore discuss whether we want the gazebo launch file (see Implements the 'franka_gazebo' simulation MoveIt control #21) to use the or that we adjust them to work with the new xacro file. The first option has the benefit that the simulation is a lot more stable and closely related to working with the real robot. The second option has the benefit that it created launch files that can more easily adjusted to different robot systems.

• Maybe we want to add some parameters found in the chomp_planning.yaml file of the melodic-devel branch to the chomp_planning.yaml file that is created by the moveit_setup_assistant?

• Maybe we also want to add the remaping found in Remaps move_group 'joint_states' to 'joint_states_desired' #54 into the moveit_setup_assistant template.

• The CHOMP ridge_factor should be changed to 0.0 since this is the default.

• The CHOMP enable_failure_recovery should be changed to false since this is the default.

Moveit Changes

• The CHOMP algorithm contains several commented out parameters that might be removed (see https://github.com/ros-planning/moveit/blob/d57721cf8503fe893347196cc1e1f9249ec57777/moveit_planners/chomp/chomp_motion_planner/include/chomp_motion_planner/chomp_parameters.h#L81-L88).

Problems that still exist

• I did not test the workings of the TrajOpt planner since it did not build on my system (see Trajopt with no dependency to tesseract moveit/moveit#1626 (comment)).
• The STOMP planner seems to fail on ROS Noetic due to a upstream bug.