Inverse Dynamics with Force Plate in Robotics

This repository contains the project files which arose within the framework of a bachelor thesis by one student within the time frame of four months in the year 2023 in Karlsruhe, Germany.
The bachelor thesis took place as part of a degree at the KIT Department of Informatics.
The experiments were carried out with the kind support of the employees at the Robot and Human Motion Lab of the DHBW Karlsruhe, Germany (only available in german) within their premises.

Hardware and associated Software

• Vicon motion capture system
  • Vicon Vero cameras
  • Vicon Lock Lab serving as input device from the AMTI amplifier
  • Vicon Tracker 3.10
  • Vicon Datastream SDK 1.12 (already included in the repository)
• Universal Robots UR5e robot
• AMTI hardware
  • AMTI Optima BMS400600-2K force plate
  • Optima-SC (OPT-SC) Amplifier

Dependencies

• Kubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa). Ubuntu version matters for ROS. See http://wiki.ros.org/noetic/Installation.

Ubuntu packages

• ros-noetic-desktop-full 1.5.0
  • ros-noetic-catkin 0.8.10
  • ros-noetic-rosbag 1.16.0
  • ros-noetic-rospy 1.16.0
• PlotJuggler with ros integration ros-noetic-plotjuggler 3.7.1
• Python 3.8.10
• pip3 20.0.2
• g++ 9.4.0
• cmake 3.26.4

Python packages

Show local version of lib: pip3 show <libname>
Install lib: pip3 install <libname>
Update lib: pip3 install -U <libname>

• ur_rtde 1.5.6
• urdf2casadi
• casadi 3.5.5
• matplotlib 3.7.2
• pandas 2.0.3
• numpy 1.24.3
• scipy 1.10.1
• varname 0.11.2
• rosbag 1.16.0 (via Ubuntu package)
• rospy 1.16.0 (via Ubuntu package)
• (sympy 1.12)
• (reloading 1.1.2)

Execution

Generate plots:

• cd into Scripts/Pipelines.
• Execute the respective script via python3 <scriptname>.py.

Collect data with rosbag:

• cd into catkin_ws.
• Execute catkin_make once.
• Execute source ./devel/setup.bash. Rosnodes will need this command before their execution.
• Start roscore and all the necessary ros nodes. For some tasks, there are already bash scripts within the directory.
• Save data via rosbag record.
  • If you want to use the data afterwards, make sure to put the bagfiles in the data directory intended for them.

Analyze time series visually with PlotJuggler:

• Start roscore.
• Start PlotJuggler via rosrun plotjuggler plotjuggler.
• You can use some PlotJuggler layouts saved in catkin_ws. Their filename extension is .xml.
• To use PlotJuggler live, start it together with the respective ros nodes when collecting data.
• To use PlotJuggler on saved data:
  • Execute rosbag play -l <bagname>.
  • Optionally, start some ros nodes that will work with the topics from the rosbags.