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ronoco

With ROS, creating a robotic system means developing programs in C++ or Python, making ROS inaccessible to all non-developer experts: process engineers, industrialization engineers...

Writing code is indeed becoming essential for complex robots.

However, for several years now, an alternative method has been making headway: no-code. This consists of designing computer programs without writing code, often via a graphic interface. This project consists of developing a prototype of a "no-code ROS" that can be used to program manipulative robots under MoveIt and rolling robots.

Ronoco connects to the ROS ecosystem and generates standard ROS messages, maintaining the interoperable ROS (robot-agnostic) DNA.

The ronoco project is divide into three distinct modules, each fulfilling different and complementary roles to provide a graphical interface for designing ROS manipulation programs.

The three modules are ronoco-vm a ROS package consisting of a flask API that interprets the sequence of blocks in the GUI and translates them into ROS code. The second is ronoco-nodered a

The last one is ronoco-ui a web client allowing to use the two previous modules. It provides utilities for the robot (registering positions, launching a program, stopping the server etc). On the other hand it allows defining programs using a no-code interface like NodeRed or Scratch (WIP)

Can ronoco be used on my robot?

To use ronoco with your robot it is necessary that it has the following specifications:

  1. For a manipulator robot it is necessary that it is compatible with MoveIt. Ronoco mainly uses MoveIt to control the manipulator robots and the rviz visualization topics
  2. For a rolling robot it is necessary that it is compatible with MoveBase. Ronoco uses the SimpleActionClient of move base for navigation. The robot will also have to provide a topic where it publishes its current position (typically /amcl_pose) as well as a topic allowing it to be teleoperated (typically /cmd_vel)

If your robot meets these specifications you can use ronoco with it!

Documentation

The project documentation is available at https://sdelpeuch.github.io/Ronoco/. It includes guides for users (installation, start-up, use, examples on robots), guides for developers as well as a precise documentation of the different modules.

Installation

To install ronoco you need the following packages:

  • npm
  • python3
  • ROS noetic (also works on ROS melodic)

To start it is necessary to clone the project in the catkin workspace

cd $HOME/catkin_ws/src/
git clone https://github.com/Sdelpeuch/ronoco.git

Then you have to install the three modules that constitute ronoco. Firstly ronoco-nodered allowing the user to define the behaviour trees of the robot (see How to use it and How to create a behaviour tree). This module depends on Node-RED, so it is necessary to install the framework and then the blocks specific to ronoco.

sudo npm install -g --unsafe-perm node-red
mkdir $HOME/.node-red/
cd $HOME/.node-red/
npm install $HOME/catkin_ws/src/ronoco/ronoco-nodered/

Once ronoco-nodered is installed it is necessary to install the web client inside ronoco-ui

cd $HOME/catkin_ws/src/ronoco/ronoco-ui/
npm install

Finally, all that remains is to install the application engine found in ronoco-vm.

cd $HOME/catkin_ws/src/ronoco/ronoco-vm/
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Before using ronoco it is necessary to compile the ROS workspace

cd $HOME/catkin_ws/
catkin_make
source devel/setup.bash

Set up Rviz (optionnal)

If you want to view the different points and paths defined by ronoco in rviz it is necessary to add two markers in rviz.

To add a marker in rviz : click on "add" at the bottom left of the screen. A menu opens. Click on "Marker". Then in the menu on the left of your screen (Displays) find "Marker". Scroll down the menu and set the "Marker topic" field to :

  1. to view the recorded points: "visualization_marker".
  2. (rolling robots only) to view the paths travelled: "path_coverage_marker"

Quick Start

Manipulator mode

To launch the project with a manipulator arm, simply run the following command:

roslaunch ronoco manipulator.launch commander:=string compliant_mode:=string end_effector:=string

With as argument :

  • commander: the name of the move_group in MoveIt
  • compliant_mode: manual if the robot can go into compliant mode manually, None if the robot cannot go into compliant mode, or the name of the service to put it in and out of compliant mode.
  • end_effector: the name of the service to manipulate the effector, e.g. "wsg_50_driver/move". (optional)

Rolling mode

To launch the project with a rolling robot, simply run the following command:

roslaunch ronoco rolling.launch namespace:=string

With as argument :

  • namespace: the namespace for your robot without last / (default " ")

Once all the modules are running go to your localhost:8080 and you will arrive at the ronoco page:

ronoco