The First MoveIt!

Community Meeting
(Online)

Agenda

8:00-8:10 - The State of MoveIt! - Sachin Chitta (Stealth Startup)

8:10-8:20 - OMPL - Mark Moll, Lydia Kavraki (Rice University)

8:20-8:30 - ROS-Control - Adolfo Rodrguez Tsouroukdissian (PAL Robotics)

8:30-8:40 - Updates to STOMP - Jorge Nicho (SwRI)

8:40-8:50 - MoveIt! based implementation of an I-AUV - Dina Youakim

(University of Girona)

8:50-9:00 - Team VIGIR at the DRC - Stefan Kohlbrecher (Technische

Universitt Darmstadt)

9:00-9:10 - ROS 2.0 and Manipulation - Jackie Kay (OSRF)

9:10-9:20 - Discussion

Questions?

During each talk - type your questions for the presenter in the
chat window and I will ask the presenters

Discussion at the end - type your question in the chat window

and I will un-mute you

Recording

This meeting is being recorded and will be available online soon.

The State of MoveIt!

Sachin Chitta
Founder and CEO,
Stealth Robotics Startup

MoveIt! must be doing well There are more than 200 people registered for this call!!

Statistics

Number of installations (2015): 10,089 *

Number of users on the mailing list: 693 (up from

177 in 2013)

Number of robots with MoveIt! used on them

(Today) > 65

MoveIt! was ranked #3 on the list of important ROS

packages that people cared about (after Rviz and
Navigation)
* (based on no. of visits to MoveIt! install page)

Contributors (2014-2015)

Thanks to Mike Ferguson, Dave Coleman, Jon

Bohren, Conor Brew, Acorn Pooley, Dave
Hershberger, Shaun Edwards, Dr. Chris Lewis,
Jorge Nicho, Ben Chretien, Adolfo Rodriguez, Kei
Okada, Ioan Sucan, Stefan Kohlbrecher and
more

New Features (2014-2015)

Cartesian Path Planner Plugin (ROS-Industrial Consortium)

New trajectory display (Dave Coleman)

Trajectory velocity scaling (Stefan Kohlbrecher, Team

VIGIR)

Joystick Interface (Ryohei Ueda, Dave Coleman)

Plugin interface for collision detection (Mike Ferguson)

Updates to Point Cloud Octomap Updater (Conor Brew)

New Robots
Taurus (SRI International)

HOLLIE (FZI Karlsruhe)

TIAgo (PAL Robotics)

I-AUV (University of Girona)

ATLAS (DRC)
Yaskawa Motoman
SDA 10F

Fetch (Fetch Robotics)

Education
Versatile Manipulation:
Baxter Robot with MoveIt!
Used to Teach Robotics
Fundamentals at
Columbia University

Matei Ciocarlie
Columbia University

Applications

Path Planning for FEI Transmission

Electron Microscopes (TEM) (Alten
Mechatronics)

Humanoid Robotics
(Multiple Teams - DRC)

Underwater Robotics (University of

Girona)

Amazon Picking Challenge

Papers
ICRA 2015

The Affordance Template ROS Package for Robot Task Programming, Stephen Hart, Paul Dinh and Kimberly Hambuchen

New Brooms Sweep Clean an Autonomous Robotic Cleaning Assistant for Professional Office Cleaning, Richard Bormann, Joshua
Hampp and Martin Haegele

Towards a Data-Driven Approach to Human Preferences in Motion Planning, Arjun Menon, Pooja Kacker and Sachin Chitta

VIBI: Assistive Vison-Based Interface for Robot Manipulation, Camilo Alfonso Perez Quintero, Oscar Alejandro Ramirez and Martin
Jagersand

Modeling of Movement Control Architectures Based on Motion Primitives Using Domain-Specific Languages, Arne Nordmann,
Sebastian Wrede and Jochen H. Steil

Experience-Based Planning with Sparse Roadmap Spanners, David Coleman, Ioan A. Sucan, Mark Moll, Kei Okada, and Nikolaus
Correll

An Autonomous Robotic Assistant for Drinking, Sebastian Schroer, Ingo Killmann, Barbara Frank, Martin Volker, Lukas Fiederer, Tonio
Ball and Wolfram Burgard

Towards Manipulation Planning with Temporal Logic Specifications, Keliang He, Morteza Lahijanian, Lydia E. Kavraki, and Moshe Y.
Vardi

A Framework for End-User Instruction of a Robot Assistant for Manufacturing, Kelleher R. Guerin, Colin Lea, Chris Paxton, Gregory D.
Hager

Simultaneous Localization, Mapping, and Manipulation for Unsupervised Object Discovery, Lu Ma, Mahsa Ghafarianzadeh, David
Coleman, Nikolaus Correll, and Gabe Sibley

Robot Programming by Demonstration with Situated Spatial Language Understanding, Maxwell Forbes, Rajesh P. N. Rao, Luke
Zettlemoyer and Maya Cakmak

Open-Source Software

Events (2015)

Amazon Picking Challenge

ICRA 2015, Seattle

DARPA Robotics Challenge

June 5-6, 2015 California

"MoveIt! Strengths, Weaknesses, and

Developer Insights" - Dave Coleman
(University of Colorado Boulder)

Help Needed

MoveIt! Website

porting to github pages - if you have experience with github pages,

please email me: robot.moveit@gmail.com

Tutorials are not up to date - if you are willing to write new tutorials for
commonly used robots, generate PRs

Contribute

Make MoveIt! a better tool for research

coordinate community efforts around a few features every quarter

End of year goals (2015)

Integrate better support for humanoid kinematics (e.g. Robonaut)

Integrate benchmarks updates (Kavraki Lab, Rice University)

Resurrect support for other types of planners (e.g. STOMP)

Contribute

Join the MoveIt! mailing list

moveit-users@googlegroups.com

Please send us news for the blog!!

movies of projects, robots

Contribute

Write MoveIt! development support into your grants

Contribute code, develop tests, write tutorials

Future

Better integration with ROS-Control

Better integration with grasping tools

E.g. - GraspIt!

Upgrade to ROS 2.0

feedback from control flowing back to MoveIt!

changes to underlying MoveIt! architecture

More support for Mobile Manipulators

3D Navigation, integrate manipulation and navigation

Manipulation in ROS
FCL

OMPL
STOMP
Applications

Visual
Sensors

Other Motion
Planners

MoveIt!

ROS-Control

Other Collision
Checkers

Joint
Sensors
Joint
Control

Contact

We plan to hold this meeting every quarter

Next Meeting: January 2016 (Tentative)

Maybe co-locate with conferences - suggestions

are welcome

Contact

CONTACT: Sachin Chitta (robot.moveit@gmail.com)

OMPL
The Open Motion Planning Library
Mark Moll & Lydia E. Kavraki
Department of Computer Science

Rice University

Houston, TX

USA

OMPL in a nutshell (1/2)

Default motion planning back-end in MoveIt!
Common core for sampling-based motion planners

However, API not specific to sampling-based planning:

possible to add other planning algorithms

Intended for use in:

config. & database

server

sensor data

Education

Research

MoveIt!

Industry
OMPL

...

...

robot path client

OMPL in a nutshell (2/2)

C++ library with extensive Python bindings
Includes commonly-used heuristics

Takes care of many low-level details often skipped in papers

35 (!) dierent sampling-based algorithms:

Multi-query & single-query planners

Optimizing planners

Kinodynamic planners

High level of abstraction for, e.g.,:

State spaces: need not be Euclidean, metric, or even continuous

State validity: more general than collision checking

Path optimization objectives: more than just path length

Extensive benchmarking facilities

Highlights of upcoming release (v1.1)

New planning algorithms:
Thunder & Lightning Dave Coleman

Informed RRT* & Batch Informed Trees (BIT*) Jonathan Gammell

Lower-Bound Tree Rapidly-expanding Random Tree

(LBT-RRT) & Lazy LBT-RRT Oren Salzman

Updated T-RRT, bidirectional version of T-RRT Ryan Luna

Goal optimization included in path optimization Ryan Luna

Faster nearest-neighbors queries Mark Moll
Web-based planning & benchmarking Prudhvi Boyapalli

Thunder Dave Coleman

Thunder

Finding balanced
poses for 30 DOF
HRP2 humanoid
using past
experience in a
variety of scenes

all images courtesy of Dave Coleman

Thunder provides
significant
improvements
over Lightning
and planning
from scratch in
changing
environments

all images courtesy of Dave Coleman

Informed RRT* Jonathan Gammell

from Gammell et al., IROS 14

Batch Informed Trees (BIT*) Jonathan Gammell

Extension of incremental graph-search techniques, such as Lifelong Planning
A* (LPA*), to continuous domains.

from Gammell et al., ICRA 15

Web-based planning & benchmarking

Prudhvi Boyapalli

http://omplapp.
kavrakilab.org

Web-based planning & benchmarking

Web-based planning & benchmarking

Upload your own benchmark data

at
http://plannerarena.org
Requires updated MoveIt! benchm
arking code:
https://github.com/ryanluna/m
oveit_benchmarks

Getting involved with OMPL

Visit us at http://ompl.kavrakilab.org
Repositories:
https://bitbucket.org/ompl/ompl (mercurial)

https://github.com/ompl/ompl (git mirror)

Mailing lists:
ompl-users@lists.sourceforge.net general OMPL-related discussion

ompl-devel@lists.sourceforge.net core developers

ROS control, what's new?

MoveIt! Community Meeting
October 3, 2015
Adolfo Rodrguez Tsouroukdissian

ROS control what's new?

New features
- Already available
- Work in progress

Quality Assurance metrics

- Code coverage statistics

ROS control overview

More details @ ROScon'14 talk

https://vimeo.com/107507546

ROS control new features

runtime joint mode switching
- credit: Mathias Ldtke (Fraunhofer IPA)

ROS control new features

multi-interface controllers
- jade-only, breaks ROS and C++ API
- credit: PAL Robotics

ROS control new features

per-controller update period
- integer divider of controller_manager frequency
- credit: Johannes Meyer (Intermodalics)

ROS control new features

rqt_controller_manager
- UI revamp, jade-only
- credit: Kelsey Hawkins (Georgia Tech), PAL Robotics

ROS control new features

rqt_controller_manager
- UI revamp, jade-only
- credit: Kelsey Hawkins (Georgia Tech), PAL Robotics

ROS control QA

ROS control QA

ROS control QA

ROS control

Questions?

Acknowledgments
This work has been partially supported by the Factory in a Day
European Community FP7 project under grant agreement
609206.

MoveIt Community Meeting

Jorge Nicho
Research Engineer
Southwest Research Institute

Motivation
MoveIt planners
Pros:
Can be used right out of the box.
Can solve difficult path planning
problems.
Simple paths can be generated very
quickly.

Cons:
Tend to produce jerky trajectories.
May introduce unnecessary robot
movements.
Can be difficult to tune to meet special
cases.
Post-processing smoothing step is usually
needed.

Stomp
Stochastic Trajectory Optimization
Planner
Optimization-based planner that
generates smooth well behaved collision
free motion paths in reasonable time.
Original work by (Mrinal Kalakrishnan,
Sachin Chitta, Evangelos Theodorou,
Peter Pastor, Stefan Schaal, ICRA 2011)
Code base was discontinued after the
transition to ROS-hydro more than 2
years ago
Relevant moveit modules (now in
moveit_experimental) were also
discontinued

STOMP highlights
Generates smooth well behaved
motion plans in reasonable time,
no need for post-processing
smoothing.
Can Incorporates additional
objective functions such as
torque limits, energy and tool
constraints.
Handles cost functions that dont
need to be differentiable.
Uses distance field and spherical
approximations to quickly
compute distance queries and
collision costs.

Current Status
Updated the deprecated STOMP code base so that it
uses the latest in the MoveIt library.
Available as a Motion Planning Plugin that can be
loaded by the move_group node and invoked from the
rviz Motion Planning panel.
Can be easily configured with yaml files.
Loads robot and environment information from urdf,
srdf and yaml files.
Optimizes for obstacle avoidance and smoothness.
Code available at https://github.com/rosindustrial/industrial_moveit

STOMP Demonstration Videos

Moveit Planners vs STOMP
STOMP Demonstration

Future Tentative Work

Allow for optimization of other relevant
objectives such as dynamics, energy, path
constraints, etc.
Remove residual dead code (a lot of work).
Better integration with the MoveIt pipeline
(MoveIt Setup Assistant?)
Serialization of Distance fields generated from
large models.
Handling of dynamic environment obstacles such
as octomap and attached bodies.

Contact Information
Jorge Nicho
Research Engineer
Southwest Research Institute
Phone: 210-522-3107
Email: jorge.nicho@swri.org

Stomp Source Code

https://github.com/ros-industrial/industrial_moveit

Universitat de Girona!

Intervention AUVs

Computer Vision and Robotics Group!

GIRONA'UNDERWATER)
VISION)AND)ROBOTICS'

MoveIt! based
Implementation of an I-AUV

Dina%Youakim%
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GIRONA'UNDERWATER)
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Intervention AUVs

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GIRONA'UNDERWATER)
VISION)AND)ROBOTICS'

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Underwater Exploration
Nowadays AUV are only used for
Survey Applications
Nowadays Intervention is Carried out
with ROVs
Intervention AUVs is the Next Challenge

Underwater Intervention
Black Box Search &
Recovery

Oil Spill Fixing

Oil Industry

Intervention AUVs

State$of$the$Art:$Autonomous$Underwater$IntervenAon$

GIRONA'UNDERWATER)
VISION)AND)ROBOTICS'

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! SAUVIM USA PROJECT

6 Ton I-AUV.
6000 m. Depth rated.
Pasive Arm for object localization.
7 DOF arm for object manipulation.
Free Floating Manipulation.
Task Priority Redundancy Control.
[Marani et al. 08].

! TRIDENT EU PROJECT
200 Kg I-AUV.
500 m. Depth rated.
7 DOF arm for object manipulation.
Free Floating Manipulation.
Task Priority Redundancy Control.
Black Box Search & Recovery
4

[Sanz et al. 12].

Intervention AUVs

State$of$the$Art:$Autonomous$Valve$Turning$$

GIRONA'UNDERWATER)
VISION)AND)ROBOTICS'

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FLOATING

DOCKING

! ALIVE EU Project
[Evans et al. 03]
2 hydraulic GRABS for docking
7DoF arm for manipulation
Sonar/vision based docking to an underwater panel
! TRITON Spanish Project
Funnel based Pasive Docking
Range Only + Vision Navigation
Valve Turning + Hot Stab Insertion

[Palomeras et al. 14]

! PANDORA FP7
Learning by Demonstration
Vision based Navigation
Valve Turning

[carrera et al. 14]

! Another Approach
Task Priority Redundancy Control
Vision based Navigation
Valve Turning

[Cieslak et al. 14]

5$

Intervention AUVs

$MoveIt!$Based$Robots$&$Underwater$

GIRONA'UNDERWATER)
VISION)AND)ROBOTICS'

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Humanoids

Mobile
Manipulators

Industrial
Robots

Research the suitability of using the MoveIt! framework for controlling an

UVMS to perform autonomous intervention tasks.

6$

Intervention AUVs

Girona500$IIAUV$

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GIRONA'UNDERWATER)
VISION)AND)ROBOTICS'

Light weight.
4 actuated DoFs.
2 passively stable DoFs: Roll & Pitch.
DVL, AHRS navigation sensors.
EKF-based position localization
& Visual Navigation.
Cascade controller (pose, velocity,
torque)
[Ribas et al. 11]

ECA/CSIP Micro Arm

4 DoFs.
Position Control.
Passive Gripper.

7$

$Intervention AUVs

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GIRONA'UNDERWATER)
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Intervention AUVs

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Intervention AUVs

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Intervention AUVs

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Intervention AUVs

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Intervention AUVs

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Intervention AUVs

References$

GIRONA'UNDERWATER)
VISION)AND)ROBOTICS'

Prats, M., Prez, J., Fernndez, J. J., & Sanz, P. J. (2012, October). An
open source tool for simulation and supervision of underwater intervention
missions. In Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2012 IEEE/RSJ
International Conference.
Pan, J., Chitta, S., & Manocha, D. (2012, May). FCL: A general purpose
library for collision and proximity queries. In Robotics and Automation
(ICRA), 2012 IEEE International Conference.
Palomeras, N., Penalver, A., Massot-Campos, M., Vallicrosa, G., Negre, P.
L., Fernandez, J. J., & Palomer, A. (2014, September). I-AUV docking and
intervention in a subsea panel. In Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS
2014), 2014 IEEE/RSJ International Conference.
Coleman, D., Sucan, I., Chitta, S., & Correll, N. (2014). Reducing the
barrier to entry of complex robotic software: a moveit! case study.
P. Cieslak, P. Ridao, M. Giergiel. Autonomous Underwater Panel Operation
by GIRONA500 UVMS: A Practical Approach to Autonomous Underwater
Manipulation. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
(ICRA), 2015
21$

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Universitat de Girona!

Intervention AUVs

Computer Vision and Robotics Group!

GIRONA'UNDERWATER)
VISION)AND)ROBOTICS'

MoveIt! based
Implementation of an I-AUV

$
Thank$You!$
22$

9/2/15$

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