uclv_tactile_sensor

ROS 2 packages for the unicampania force/tactile sensors.

Installation

You need all the pkgs listed in repos.yaml.

You can download all the repos using vcstool

# In the src of your ament workspace
vcs import < uclv_tactile_sensor/repos.yaml

Setup

To use the wired finger at full speed (500Hz) you need to install setserial:

sudo apt-get install setserial

When the finger is connected to the PC, take note of the dev file that Linux assigns to the device. It is something like /dev/ttyUSB# with # a number. You can check it using the command:

ls /dev/ttyUSB*

Typically the first finger that you connect takes the id /dev/ttyUSB0 and the second takes id /dev/ttyUSB1.

You need the access rights to the device. /dev/ttyUSB# is owned by root and the group is dialout. You can simply add your user to the dialout group:

sudo usermod -a -G groupName userName

Run the ROS drivers

You can run the driver to read the raw voltages using the launch file:

ros2 launch uclv_tactile_driver tactile_serial.launch.py

You can run the driver to read the debiased voltages using the launch file:

ros2 launch uclv_tactile_driver tactile_serial_debiased.launch.py

It has the following parameters:

Parameter	Description	Default
serial_port	Device file associated with the finger	/dev/ttyUSB0
baud_rate	Baud rate for serial communication. For the wired fingers it has to be 1000000.	1000000
voltage_raw_topic	Output topic for the raw voltages	tactile_voltage/raw
voltage_rect_topic	Output topic for the de-biased voltages	tactile_voltage/rect
action_compute_bias	Action name that computes the bias*	tactile_voltage/action_compute_bias

*the bias is computed at startup, you can force a new computation calling this action.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache-2.0 License - see the LICENSE file in the packages for details