WoLF: Whole-body Locomotion Framework for quadruped robots

This repo contains the setup for the whole-body controller presented in the following papers raiola2020simple, raiola2022wolf:

@article{raiola2020simple,
  title={A simple yet effective whole-body locomotion framework for quadruped robots},
  author={Raiola, Gennaro and Mingo Hoffman, Enrico and Focchi, Michele and Tsagarakis, Nikos and Semini, Claudio},
  journal={Frontiers in Robotics and AI},
  volume={7},
  pages={159},
  year={2020},
  publisher={Frontiers}
}

@article{raiola2022wolf,
  title={WoLF: the Whole-body Locomotion Framework for Quadruped Robots},
  author={Raiola, Gennaro and Focchi, Michele and Hoffman, Enrico Mingo},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.06526},
  year={2022}
}

Features

WoLF provides several features for your quadruped robotic friend:

Push recovery	Step reflex	Navigation ready	Loco-manipulation	Multi robot

Packages

• wolf-setup: This repository, containing scripts and installation utilities for WoLF.
• wolf_descriptions: It contains robot and sensor descriptions used with WoLF. Please check out this repository If you want to add your own robot to WoLF.
• wolf_descriptions_extra: Extra robot models.
• wolf_gazebo_resources: Gazebo models and other goodies to create interesting simulation environments.
• wolf_hardware_interface: It implements a hardware interface for ros_control to be used with WoLF.
• wolf_gazebo_interface: Gazebo hardware interface for ros_control.
• wolf_unitree_interface: Unitree hardware interface for WoLF based on wolf_hardware_interface and ros_control.
• wolf_navigation: A package interfacing the ROS navigation stack with WoLF.
• wolf_planner: MPC planner for WoLF based on ocs2.
• wolf_rviz_plugin: A plugin for rviz to interact with some functionalities of WoLF.
• wolf_msgs: ROS message and service definitions.
• wolf_controller_utils: WoLF common utilities.

How to run WoLF

You can run WoLF by installing the debian packages on your computer or with a docker container. To clone this repository run the following command:

git clone https://github.com/graiola/wolf-setup.git

Docker container for Ubuntu 16.04 - 18.04 - 20.04

To download the image from docker-hub and launch WoLF within a docker container, run the following script:

./run_docker.sh

You can see what are the available options in the script with the following command:

./run_docker.sh --help

In case you don't have docker installed on your computer, you can run the following script:

./support/install_docker.sh

This script will install docker and its dependencies.

Demos:

We prepared some demos to run directly within the docker container:

• ./demos/2d_navigation.sh : Run an indoor 2D navigation demo
• ./demos/3d_navigation.sh : Run an outdoor 3D navigation demo
• ./demos/manipulation.sh : Run spot with a kinova arm mounted on top
• ./demos/locomotion.sh : Run a demo with stairs

Notes:

• It could be necessary to restart the computer after running install_docker.sh.
• Use the install_nvidia.sh script in the support folder if you are experiencing the following problem: could not select device driver "" with capabilities: [[gpu]].
• If you are experiencing this problem nvidia-container-cli initialization error nvml error driver not loaded, it probably means that your computer does not have the latest nvidia-drivers installed, so be sure that they are installed and updated to the last version.

System installation for Ubuntu 20.04

To install the required dependencies (including ROS) and the WoLF debian packages run the following:

./install.sh

After the installation, update your bash enviroment with the following command:

source ~/.bashrc

How to start the controller

WoLF provides four interfaces to move the robot:

• A PS3 joypad interface: roslaunch wolf_controller wolf_controller_bringup.launch input_device:=ps3
• A XBox joypad interface: roslaunch wolf_controller wolf_controller_bringup.launch input_device:=xbox
• A keyboard interface: roslaunch wolf_controller wolf_controller_bringup.launch input_device:=keyboard
• A spacemouse interface: roslaunch wolf_controller wolf_controller_bringup.launch input_device:=spacemouse

A twist topic is always active and listening for velocity commands on /robot_name/wolf_controller/twist. This topic can be used to send twist commands at a lower priority than the above mentioned interfaces. It can also be used to send move_base commands if you want to integrate WoLF with the ROS navigation stack (see wolf_navigation for an example). To make the robot stand up, press the start button on the joypad or press the enter key if you are using the keyboard.

How to add a new robot

If you want to test a different quadruped robot check out wolf_descriptions.

Changelog

Check the changelog here

Legal notes

• wolf-setup is distributed and licensed under a license GNU General Public License v3.0.
• wolf-controller is licensed under a license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
• For the other packages please check the respective LICENSE document.