IK Service Example

Summary

The Head "Wobbler" Example randomly moves the head to demonstrate using the head pan and nod interfaces.

• Quickstart
• Overview
• Interfaces
  • ROS APIs
  • baxter_interface APIs
• Troubleshooting

Quickstart

From an RSDK shell, run the wobbler.py demo from the head_control package:
bash $ rosrun head_control wobbler.py Baxter's head will nod and begin panning left and right to random angles.

Overview

IK Example [#6809]
There is a new example in the sdk called ‘inverse_kinematics’. It is an example of how to communicate with a robot-side ros node that provides an IK service. This node is the same as a node we use in production; the interface was not created for the SDK.
The example script simply calls the service for a canonical cartesian point + orientation for either the left or right arm and as such merely provides the most basic example of how to call this service. Note that we provide this service just to have some out of the box method for IK without having to port a bunch of our robot code to the SDK side, or reimplement sdk-side IK some other way. For anything needing high-performance IK, it makes a lot more sense to implement it on the dev machine

Baxter's head can move up and down in a nod motion, and rotate left-to-right in a pan motion. The head nod motion is a single action that can be triggered to run, but cannot be set to a specific angle. The pan motion swings Baxter's 'face' (a.k.a. screen) to a settable angle, rotating around the vertical axes of the head.

The head wobbler example is intented to be a simple demo whose code can be examined to learn how to use the head and demonstrate the use of the baxter_interface Head class. The non-interactive demo calls the command_nod() function and then sets the head pan to a few randomly generated angles, waiting in between each in order to give enough time for the head to move there.

For more information on Baxter's head, see Using the Head.

Interfaces

ROS APIs

See the API Reference page for details.

• Nod Head: /sdk/robot/head/command_head_nod
• Pan Head: /sdk/robot/head/command_head_pan

baxter_interface APIs

• Head class: head.py
  • command_nod()
  • set_pan( <angle> )

Troubleshooting

For common issues specific to using wobbler with Baxter, check out the Troubleshooting page.