This repository contains a set of tools for NAO robot simulation and artificial skin. There are two main components, plugin, which allows you to control Nao in Gazebo via NAOqi, and skin plugin, which publishes contact info on specified port. There is also a skin generator and Python skin driver for usage with naoqi SDK.
Schematics can be found here: https://github.com/martinj8649/nao-gazebo-skin/tree/master/docs/nao_gazebo_skin_schematics.png
Below is description of structure of this repository.
This is basically nao-gazebo plugin (https://github.com/costashatz/nao_gazebo) modified to work with Gazebo 7 and ROS Indigo. To use it, put it into your catkin workspace. Before compilation, you must specify path to your naoqi simulator SDK and naoqi C++ SDK (lines 4, 5 in FindNAOqiSIM.cmake in gazebo_naoqi_control/cmake).
In folder with extracted naoqi C++ SDK, go into etc/naoqi and in file autoload.ini uncomment dcm_hal.
Then you can compile it.
For succesfull compilation on Ubuntu 14.04 (default for ROS Indigo), you might need at least gcc 4.9 (because of a c++ 11 features). You can have more versions of gcc with update-alternatives - try to look here: https://codeyarns.com/2015/02/26/how-to-switch-gcc-version-using-update-alternatives/
In fact you must install gcc/g++ 4.9 and pass it to update-alternatives like this:
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.8 100 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.8
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-4.9 50 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-4.9
Then you can switch default compiler with:
sudo update-alternatives --config gcc
Here you can find nao robot models. All are based on nao-gazebo plugin model. There are .xacro files, which are not used by our project at this moment. Two files are important: -> nao_skin_hand_corrected.sdf : this file is what generates artificial skin generator, but skin segments placement is corrected by hand, but there is a problem that nao loses gravity when multiple self_collide tags are set to true -> nao_hand_corrected_no_gravity_bug.sdf : issue with self_collide tags is solved -> nao_final.sdf : most recent and working model (27.7.2017), skin on r_wrist, l_wrist, Head and base_link.
Here you can find many files. For us, the important ones are: -> link_template.txt: this is template, which will be modified by skin generator and inserted into link sdf description for each taxel -> sens_template.txt: this is template of a skin sensor, again modified by generator and inserted -> sensor_template.txt: template of a skin sensor, but used by older generator functions. -> wholeSkinGenerator.py: code which calls placeSensors.py. In the code you can choose links of a robot to cover with skin, path to original nao sdf, path to output modified model and paths to files with vertices, which will be used to calculate taxel positions -> placeSensors.py: called by wholeSkinGenerator, there are more functions, most of them are old and were used in first stages of development - focus on generateIntoSDF() and generateWholeSkin().
This is a complete setup of a contact experiment, where the robot tries to reach predefined collision (self-touch) configurations. Collisions are simply reported into the command line. Just set variables POS_FILE_NAME to path to file with configurations in joint space and ARM ("LArm", "RArm"). Remember, for each hand joint space you need different coordinates! Arms are different... NOTE: This experiment is slightly modified - positions were sampled with different Nao model, so in some positions robot is not able to touch itself, when it should. So to fourth joint here is added angle 0.3 rad (lines 116, 119).
This is a Gazebo sensor plugin for our skin, which reads collision data and does some preprocessing. It contains UDP server, which publishes processed collision data on port 9091 (in form of strings).
All code except nao-gazebo-modified-for-G7 and model of Nao (nao.xacro) is released under GNU GPL v3 and copyrighted by Martin Jilek. Nao-gazebo-modified-for-G7 is modified version of nao_gazebo plugin copyrighted by Konstantinos Chatzilygeroudis. Modified model nao.xacro in robot-models was also part of nao_gazebo plugin. These two parts are released under BSD license. For details see files LICENSE.txt of particular folders.