Joystick Control Teleoperation

Run

Startup regular MoveIt! planning node with Rviz (for example demo.launch)

Make sure you have the dependencies installed:

sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-joy

In the Motion Planning plugin of Rviz, enable “Allow External Comm.” checkbox in the “Planning” tab. Enable the ‘Query Goal State’ robot display in the MoveIt! Motion Planning Plugins’s ‘Planning Request’ section.

Now launch the joystick control launch file specific to your robot. If you are missing this file, first re-run the MoveIt! Setup Assistant using the latest version of the Setup Assistant:

roslaunch YOURROBOT_moveit_config joystick_control.launch

The script defaults to using /dev/input/js0 for your game controller port. To customize, you can also use, for example:

roslaunch YOURROBOT_moveit_config joystick_control.launch dev:=/dev/input/js1

This script can read three types of joy sticks:

  1. XBox360 Controller via USB
  2. PS3 Controller via USB
  3. PS3 Controller via Bluetooth (Please use ps3joy package at http://wiki.ros.org/ps3joy)

Joystick Command Mappings

Command PS3 Controller Xbox Controller
+-x/y left analog stick left analog stick
+-z L2/R2 LT/RT
+-yaw L1/R1 LB/RB
+-roll left/right left/right
+-pitch up/down up/down
change planning group select/start Y/A
change end effector triangle/cross back/start
plan square X
execute circle B

Debugging

Add “Pose” to rviz Displays and subscribe to /joy_pose in order to see the output from joystick.

Note that only planning groups that have IK solvers for all their End Effector parent groups will work.

Open Source Feedback

See something that needs improvement? Please open a pull request on this GitHub page