CORBA server/client for the Graphical Interface of Pinocchio and HPP

Summary

• gepetto-viewer-corba
  • Setup
  • Dependencies
  • Install standalone urdfdom
• gepetto-gui
  • Usage
    • Basic usage
    • Adding predefined robots and environments
    • Loading plugins
    • For HPP developpers
  • Installation procedure
    • Dependencies
    • PythonQt
    • Python 3
• Troubleshooting

gepetto-viewer-corba

Setup from robotpkg apt binary package repository

1. Add robotpkg to your apt configuration: http://robotpkg.openrobots.org/debian.html
2. sudo apt update && sudo apt install robotpkg-qt4-gepetto-viewer-corba

Setup from sources

To compile this package, it is recommended to create a separate build directory:

mkdir _build
cd _build
cmake [OPTIONS] ..
make install

Please note that CMake produces a CMakeCache.txt file which should be deleted to reconfigure a package from scratch.

Makefile

A Makefile that installs the dependencies is provided for convinience. Please follow those steps:

• copy doc/Makefile,
• open and set the variable SRC_DIR and INSTALL_DIR,
• optionally, change OSG_PACKAGE and QT_VERSION,
• run make all

Note that the environment variables PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PKG_CONFIG_PATH should include the path to the installation directory.

Dependencies

The present software depends on several packages which have to be available on your machine.

• Libraries:
  • omniORB4 (version >= 4.1.4)
  • openscenegraph (version >= 3.2)
  • urdfdom (version >= 0.3.0)
  • GepettoViewer (Graphical Interface of Pinocchio and HPP)
• Binaries:
  • omniNames (installed by sudo apt-get install omniorb-nameserver)
• System tools:
  • CMake (>=2.6)
  • pkg-config
  • usual compilation tools (GCC/G++, make, etc.)

Install standalone urdfdom

In order to read urdf files (see http://wiki.ros.org/urdf for the description), one haves to install the urdfdom package which can come either along ROS library or be installed as a standalone library. Next section describes the second procedure.

urdfdom depends on both console_bridge and urdfdom_headers. The installation of both dependencies can be done with the following command lines in a terminal :

• git clone git://github.com/ros/console_bridge.git && cd console_bridge && mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. && make && sudo make install
• git clone git://github.com/ros/urdfdom_headers && cd urdfdom_headers && mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. && make && sudo make install

Finally, you just need to apply the following command line to install urdfdom library :

• git clone git://github.com/ros/urdfdom && cd urdfdom && mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. && make && sudo make install

gepetto-gui

Usage

Basic usage

Launch the binary file gepetto-gui and do as in this video.

Adding predefined robots and environments

For convenience, robots and environments can be predefined.

Automatic

• Robots:

# Use option --predefined-robots to change the robots setting file.
# OPTIONS="--predefined-robots other-robots"
OPTIONS=""

# PR2 from hpp_tutorial
gepetto-gui -g ${OPTIONS} --add-robot "PR2-hpp_tutorial,pr2,planar,pr2,hpp_tutorial,,_manipulation"
# HRP2
gepetto-gui -g ${OPTIONS} --add-robot "HRP2,hrp2,freeflyer,hrp2_14,hrp2_14_description,,"
# Romeo
gepetto-gui -g ${OPTIONS} --add-robot "Romeo,romeo,freeflyer,romeo,romeo_description,,H37V1"

• Environments:

# Use option --predefined-environments to change the environments setting file.
# OPTIONS="--predefined-environments other-environments"
OPTIONS=""

# Kitchen
gepetto-gui -g ${OPTIONS} --add-env "Kitchen,kitchen,iai_maps,kitchen_area"

Manually

The configuration files are - from the installation prefix - in etc/gepetto-gui. Open ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/etc/gepetto-gui/robots.conf and write:

[PR2 - hpp_tutorial]
RobotName=pr2
ModelName=pr2
RootJointType=planar
Package=hpp_tutorial
URDFSuffix=
SRDFSuffix=_manipulation

[HRP2]
RobotName=hrp2_14
ModelName=hrp2_14
RootJointType=freeflyer
Package=hrp2_14_description
URDFSuffix=
SRDFSuffix=

Open ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/etc/gepetto-gui/environments.conf and write:

[Kitchen]
RobotName=Kitchen
Package=iai_maps
URDFFilename=kitchen_area

Note: Do not forget to replace ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX} by a relevant path.

Loading plugins

Automatic

# Use option --config-file to change the settings file.
# OPTIONS="--config-file other-settings"
OPTIONS=""

# Using the core framework: hppcorbaserver
gepetto-gui -g ${OPTIONS} \
  --load-plugin hppwidgetsplugin.so \
  --load-plugin hppcorbaserverplugin.so \
  --load-plugin remoteimuplugin.so

# Using the manipulation framework: hpp-manipulation-server
gepetto-gui -g ${OPTIONS} \
  --load-plugin hppmanipulationwidgetsplugin.so \
  --load-plugin hppmanipulationplugin.so \
  --load-plugin hppmonitoringplugin.so \
  --load-plugin remoteimuplugin.so

Manually

Open ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/etc/gepetto-gui/settings.conf and write:

[plugins]
hppcorbaserverplugin.so=true
remoteimuplugin.so=true
hppwidgetsplugin.so=true

The plugins are looked for in the directory ${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}/lib/gepetto-gui-plugins

For HPP developpers

As HPP, the GUI can be controlled using a python interface. When the GUI starts, it launches a server for both HPP and the Gepetto Viewer exactly as if you were manually launching the two commands hppcorbaserver and gepetto-viewer-server. This means that you can run the same python scripts and it will work !

When you do so, pay attention to the following points:

• the GUI has no way of knowing when to refresh the list of joints and bodies. There is a refresh button in the Tools menu.
• you can run the hppcorbaserver (or any server embedding it, like hpp-manipulation-server) externally. Use Tools > Reset connection when the CORBA client has to reconnect to a new server. In this case, set hppcorbaserverplugin.so and hppmanipulationplugin.so to false in your settings file because they are launching the servers themselves.
• moving the robot in the GUI while the server is processing data can lead to unexpected results, because you are modifying the current configuration of HPP when not expected.

Installation procedure

There are a few dependencies to be installed before installing gepetto-gui.

Dependencies

There are a few required dependencies and several optional ones.

Core interface

There are only one dependency:

• Qt 4: sudo apt-get install qt4-dev-tools libqt4-opengl-dev libqtgui4.

Optionally, for a better rendering:

• oxygen-icon-theme: sudo apt-get install oxygen-icon-theme

Plugins

It is possible to extend the abilities of gepetto-gui with plugins.

See hpp-gui and hpp-plot for examples.

Installation of gepetto-gui

To install gepetto-gui you just have to follow the installation step at the top of this page.

PythonQt

gepetto-gui offers the possibility to develop plugins in python. To do so, you must install PythonQt by following the instructions here: https://github.com/jmirabel/PythonQt#readme

Python 3

This section describes the procedure to get bindings for Python 3. The support for Python 3 is from OmniORB 4.2.2. In Ubuntu 16.04, the version is 4.2.1, and in Ubuntu 18.04 it is 4.2.2, but Ubuntu main repos do not provide python 3 support. Thus, to make it work you must manually compile OmniORB 4.2.2. Download latest versions of OmniORB and OmniORBpy from sourceforge. Then compile OmniORB making sure it finds python3:

export PYTHON=/usr/bin/python3
cd omniORB-4.2.2/
mkdir build
cd build
../configure --prefix=${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}
make
make install

Compile OmniORBpy making sure it finds python3:

cd omniORBpy-4.2.2/
mkdir build
cd build
../configure --prefix=${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}
make
make install

Finally you can compile and install gepetto-viewer-corba making sure it finds OmniORB 4.2.2.

Troubleshooting

## Display of large meshes is very slow

A solution to help reducing the rendering time is to use Level Of Details (LOD). In short, you can use the following command to generate a LOD for mesh named mesh.ext.

gvtools --input mesh.ext --simplify 1,0,1 --simplify 0.5,1,3 --simplify 0.2,3,100 --output mesh.ext.osgb

This will create a LOD with three levels:

• from 0 to 1 meters, use original mesh,
• from 1 to 3 meters, use simplified mesh with ratio 0.5 (half less vertices),
• from 3 to 100 meters, use simplified mesh with ratio 0.2,
• farther than 100 meters, don't show anything.

gvtools is part of gepetto-viewer package. See gvtools --help for more details.

CORBA::TRANSIENT when launching a server

It very often happens that the OmniNames server failed to start properly at boot.

To check if the server is running, run:

ps -C omniNames -o pid,args

If the process is not running, delete omniNames related log and backup files in /var/lib/omniorb. They may have different names on your computer, but most likely, something like:

sudo rm /var/lib/omniORB/omninames-`hostname`.log
sudo rm /var/lib/omniORB/omninames-`hostname`.bak

then restart the server:

sudo service omniorb4-nameserver restart

Collada files are not displayed

The nodes are created and exists in the body tree widget but nothing appears in the scene viewer. This is due to a conflict between OSG and Qt. A work around is to convert the DAE to osg using the following command:

# <file> is the name of the file including the DAE extension.
# The output filename will end with .dae.osg.
osgconv <file> <file>.osg

If you have many files, you may run that at the root of the meshes subdirectories:

find ${root_of_meshes_directory} -iname "*.dae" -type f -exec osgconv {} {}.osg \;