Crossposted from willowgarage.com
David Gossow, a recent graduate of the University of Koblenz-Landau and new doctoral student at the Technical University of Munich, visited Willow Garage this spring. David created a new general framework allowing ROS developers to create graphical 3D interfaces to their robot applications, and applied it to building new tools for Human-in-the-Loop robotic manipulation.
David's new framework, called Interactive Markers, allows a ROS application to receive input from a human operator through a compatible client software. It separates the application from the tool used for visualization and user interaction, much like a web application runs independently of the web browser. Interactive Markers offer a wide variety of display and interaction modes, enabling a broad range of new applications within ROS. David also implemented a reference front end for Interactive Markers in rviz, effectively transforming it from a robot visualization tool into an interaction engine. This new front end is a major new feature in the recent ROS Electric release.
David used the Interactive Markers framework to develop new tools for Human-in-the-Loop robotic manipulation. Assistance from a human operator allows a robot to perform complex manipulation tasks even in difficult, unstructured environments. The goal in this framework is to minimize the cognitive effort required on the human side. This can be achieved by taking advantage of the sub-tasks that the robot can perform without assistance. For example, if the operator assists in object recognition, subsequent operations such as grasping and placing can be performed autonomously. When needed, the operator can also get involved at lower levels of task execution, such as specifying grasp poses or even directly operating the robot's gripper. A complete set of tools, based on Interactive Markers, allows an operator to perform all these tasks through the rviz interface.
For more details, see David's presentation below, or check out the interactive_markers and pr2_interactive_manipulation packages on ROS.org.
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