FrankaPanda

model description and driver for the Franka Panda arm

Install

This code has been developped and tested on a Ubuntu 16.04 machine using rt_preempt patch (4.16.18-rt12).

1. Set up your Panda robot and controller following the instructions on this page. Connect your computer to the robot controller (not the robot directly)

2. Download libfranka library and compile it. use tag 0.5.0.

    sudo apt install build-essential cmake git libpoco-dev libeigen3-dev
    git clone --recursive https://github.com/frankaemika/libfranka
    cd libfranka
    git checkout 0.5.0
    git submodule update
   

create a build folder inside libfranka and compile the library

	mkdir build
	cd build
	cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
	cmake --build .

3. Build the driver

    sudo apt-get install libjsoncpp-dev cpufrequtils
    cd ../../redis_driver
    mkdir build
    cd build
    cmake ..
    make
   

4. Don't forget to give realtime permissions to your computer account

    sudo usermod -a -G realtime $(whoami)
   

Usage

1. Open the robot interface by connecting to the ip address of the controller in your web browser (e.g. 172.16.0.10)

2. Open the User stop and the brakes of the robot through the interface

3. Open a terminal and go to the FrankaPanda/redis_driver folder

    cd <path_to_FrankaPanda_directory>/redis_driver
   

4. Launch the redis server from the given script

    sh launch_redis_server.sh
   

5. Launch the driver from the provided script. Make sure the ip address in the script is the one of your robot controller

    sh launch_driver.sh
   

Gripper usage

Once the robot interface is connected through the web browser and the gripper is initialized you can launch the gripper driver

	./build/gripper_driver <ip-address-of-robot>

You can set the desired width, desired speed, desired force and gripper mode (m for motion g for grasp) through redis