Create generic OpenraveYarpPluginLoader

[jgvictores]

Create generic OpenraveYarpPluginLoader. As a follow-up of #30, an OpenRAVE plugin to load any generic YARP plugin should be developed:

• Code base could be extracted from OpenraveYarpControlboard and eventually superseed it.
• An important design decision: OpenraveYarpControlboard goes through all robots, getting all manipulators, opens a YarpControlboard for each one. That in fact emulates teoSim. Would we want something similar? Perhaps a good approach is to do this mega-approach, then allow only parts to be specified. Will try this first.

[jgvictores]

Updated description, and set as technically blocking #30 as it may superseed it.

[jgvictores]

Note that may superseed #30 which is blocking:

• robotDevastation simulator revival asrob-uc3m/robotDevastation-robots#36
• Several https://github.com/roboticslab-uc3m/xgnitive tasks

WIP at issue-47-OpenraveYarpPluginLoader.

[jgvictores]

Very important notes on OpenRAVE plugin main() and open() at #30 (comment) as well as other ideas.

[jgvictores]

OpenraveYarpPluginLoader that loads specific YARP device developed and merged into develop at 478142c.

Possible improvements:

• Multiple device load.
• Use open for auto-open from command line (must check for race conditions such as existing robot, see these comments).
• name: Work on manipulatorIndex/sensorIndex and other alternatives.
• name: Work on suffix.

[jgvictores]

Implemented most improvements at 28ce5e9, including:

• Multiple device load.
• name: Work on manipulatorIndex/sensorIndex and other alternatives.

...which renders OpenraveYarpControlboard quite obsolete.

Considered not required:

• name: Work on suffix.

Would like to study:

• Use open for auto-open from command line (must check for race conditions such as existing robot, see these comments). However, according to this, "Robots might not necessarily be set before this function call"...

[jgvictores]

Must also update main README.

[jgvictores]

Announcement!

We no longer require Python to load YARP plugins via OpenraveYarpPluginLoader, thanks to d5cfee2.

Here are some details:

• The direct CLI one-liner succesor of teoSim is:

openrave /usr/local/share/teo-openrave-models/contexts/openrave/teo/teo.robot.xml --module OpenraveYarpPluginLoader "open --device controlboardwrapper2 --subdevice YarpOpenraveControlboard --robotIndex 0 --allManipulators"

• We can even do funky commands like the following, where open acts as a delimiter:

openrave /usr/local/share/teo-openrave-models/contexts/openrave/teo/teo.robot.xml --module OpenraveYarpPluginLoader "open --device controlboardwrapper2 --subdevice YarpOpenraveControlboard --robotIndex 0 --manipulatorIndex 0 open --device controlboardwrapper2 --subdevice YarpOpenraveControlboard --robotIndex 0 --manipulatorIndex 2"

• Two pending issues:
  • Via Python, destructors are clearly called upon ^C. Via CLI, for some reason, they are not called upon ^C. The hack would be to set up catching the signal in this main() of the function, but maybe this is overkill and we should dig into OpenRAVE guts.
  • The commented above "Robots might not necessarily be set before this function call" issue has not appeared, but could appear as the result of some race condition as documented.

@PeterBowman Okay if I perform the following steps?

1. Update documentation taking these functionalities into account.
2. Delete OpenraveYarpControlboard and related documentation/examples. XGNITIVE examples have already been updated, so there should be no current users. Perhaps the most conflictive change, as I'm not a big fan of leaving obsolete and most probably unused modules around.
3. Put a two new issues, each regarding one of the pending issues above.
4. Close this issue, start commenting on others such as Life beyond teoSim #27.

[jgvictores]

PS: Also tried via SendCommand instead of direct call to Open, same non-destructor result.

[jgvictores]

PPS: Race condition does occur via openrave.py.

[PeterBowman]

@jgvictores 👍

[jgvictores]

Finished at 73061b0. Now continued at #59, #60 and #27.