Gazebo

Gazebo is our default simulator. Follow the instructions on the next section to install and run a simulation of our robot hands using Gazebo.

Starting a robot simulation

The simulation of the system you have can be launched using the simulation icons found in a folder called “Simulation” in the “Shadow Advanced Launchers” folder. Alternatively you can use the below commands in a terminal:

First you need to start the hand container by either double clicking the icon 1 - Launch Server Container in the “Shadow Advanced Launchers” folder.

Shadow Dexterous hands

  • To start the simulation, you can run:

    roslaunch sr_robot_launch srhand.launch sim:=true
    
  • If it is a left hand, side:=left should be added. For example:

    roslaunch sr_robot_launch srhand.launch sim:=true side:=left
    
  • Moveit will enable advanced behaviour (inverse kinematics, planning, collision detectection, etc…), but if it is not needed, you can set use_moveit:=false

Bimanual hand system

Bimanual

To start the simulation of a bimanual system, you can run:

roslaunch sr_robot_launch sr_bimanual.launch sim:=true

Unimanual arm and hand system

../_images/sim_unimanual_arm_and_hand.png

To start the simulation of a unimanual right system, you can run:

roslaunch sr_robot_launch sr_right_ur10arm_hand.launch sim:=true

To add a scene, you can add scene:=true and you our default scene. You can also add your own scene adding a scene_file parameter.

../_images/sim_unimanual_arm_and_hand_with_scene.png

Similarly, to start the simulation of a unimanual left system, you can run:

roslaunch sr_robot_launch sr_left_ur10arm_hand.launch

Bimanual arm and hand system

../_images/sim_bimanual_arm_and_hand.png

To start the simulation of a bimanual arm and hand system, you can run:

roslaunch sr_robot_launch sr_bimanual_ur10arms_hands.launch external_control_loop:=false sim:=true arm_speed_scale:=0.7 scene:=true

To add a scene, you can add scene:=true and you will see our default scene.

../_images/sim_bimanual_arm_and_hand_with_scene.png

You can also add your own scene adding a scene_file parameter.

Installing the simulator in a different computer

Follow these instructions if do not have a real hand but would like to use our hand in simulation or you want to install only the simulator on a different computer.

  • ROS Noetic:

    bash <(curl -Ls https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shadow-robot/aurora/master/bin/run-ansible.sh) docker_deploy --branch master tag=noetic-v1.0.31 product=hand_e nvidia_docker=true reinstall=true sim_icon=true container_name=dexterous_hand_simulated
    

Additional parameter

Values

Description

product

hand_e, hand_lite, hand_extra_lite

Describes the shadow hand product you want to install.

reinstall

true, false

Flag to know if the docker container should be fully reinstalled.

nvidia_docker

true, false

Define if nvidia-container-toolkit is used. Use with nvidia GPU.

launch_hand

true, false

Specify if hand driver should start when double clicking desktop icon

sim_hand

true, false

If true the icon’s will autolaunch hand in simulation mode.

hand_side

right, left

Specify if the hand is right or left (ignored if bimanual=true)

bimanual

true, false

Specify if both hands are used or not.

You can tell if the installation via the one-liner was successful based on it returnining:

Operation completed

The one-liner will then create a dekstop icon that you can open and use to launch the container. If you did not have the parameter launch_hand=true in your one-liner then you can use the commands shown at the top of this page to launch the simulated hand.

More params and their explanation can be found here.