Joystick Control Teleoperation

../../_images/controller.jpg

Check out this cool demo that uses a joystick controller and MoveIt to control a PR2

Getting Started

If you haven’t already done so, make sure you’ve completed the steps in Getting Started.

Running the Code

Open two shells and make sure you have re-sourced the setup files in both of them:

source ~/ws_moveit/devel/setup.bash

In the first shell start RViz and wait for everything to finish loading:

roslaunch panda_moveit_config demo.launch

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’ Planning Request section.

Now launch in the second shell, run the joystick_control.launch file:

roslaunch panda_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 panda_moveit_config joystick_control.launch dev:=/dev/input/js1

This script can read four types of joysticks:

  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)
  4. Arctic USB Wireless Gamepad

Joystick Command Mappings

Command PS3 Controller Xbox Controller Arctic Controller
+-x/y left analog stick left analog stick left analog stick
+-z L2/R2 LT/RT L2/R2
+-yaw L1/R1 LB/RB L1/R1
+-roll left/right left/right left/right
+-pitch up/down up/down up/down
change planning group select/start Y/A 9/10
change end effector triangle/cross back/start 1/3
plan square X 4
execute circle B 2

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