ROS-PyBullet Interface: A Framework for Reliable Contact Simulation and Human-Robot Interaction

Christopher Mower; Theodoros Stouraitis; João Moura; Christian Rauch; Lei Yan; Nazanin Zamani Behabadi; Michael Gienger; Tom Vercauteren; Christos Bergeles; Sethu Vijayakumar

ROS-PyBullet Interface: A Framework for Reliable Contact Simulation and Human-Robot Interaction

Christopher Mower, Theodoros Stouraitis, João Moura, Christian Rauch, Lei Yan, Nazanin Zamani Behabadi, Michael Gienger, Tom Vercauteren, Christos Bergeles, Sethu Vijayakumar

Surgical & Interventional Engineering

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference paper › peer-review

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Abstract

Reliable contact simulation plays a key role in the development of (semi-)autonomous robots, especially when dealing with contact-rich manipulation scenarios, an active robotics research topic. Besides simulation, components such as sensing, perception, data collection, robot hardware control, human interfaces, etc. are all key enablers towards applying machine learning algorithms or model-based approaches in real world systems. However, there is a lack of software connecting reliable contact simulation with the larger robotics ecosystem (i.e. ROS, Orocos), for a more seamless application of novel approaches, found in the literature, to existing robotic hardware. In this paper, we present the ROS-PyBullet Interface, a framework that provides a bridge between the reliable contact/impact simulator PyBullet and the Robot Operating System (ROS). Furthermore, we provide additional utilities for facilitating Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in the simulated environment. We also present several use-cases that highlight the capabilities and usefulness of our framework. Please check our video, source code, and examples included in the supplementary material. Our full code base is open source and can be found at github.com/cmower/ros pybullet interface.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	6th Annual Conference on Robot Learning
Publication status	Accepted/In press - 2022

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corl2022_paperAccepted author manuscript, 6 MBLicence: CC BY

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title = "ROS-PyBullet Interface: A Framework for Reliable Contact Simulation and Human-Robot Interaction",

abstract = "Reliable contact simulation plays a key role in the development of (semi-)autonomous robots, especially when dealing with contact-rich manipulation scenarios, an active robotics research topic. Besides simulation, components such as sensing, perception, data collection, robot hardware control, human interfaces, etc. are all key enablers towards applying machine learning algorithms or model-based approaches in real world systems. However, there is a lack of software connecting reliable contact simulation with the larger robotics ecosystem (i.e. ROS, Orocos), for a more seamless application of novel approaches, found in the literature, to existing robotic hardware. In this paper, we present the ROS-PyBullet Interface, a framework that provides a bridge between the reliable contact/impact simulator PyBullet and the Robot Operating System (ROS). Furthermore, we provide additional utilities for facilitating Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in the simulated environment. We also present several use-cases that highlight the capabilities and usefulness of our framework. Please check our video, source code, and examples included in the supplementary material. Our full code base is open source and can be found at github.com/cmower/ros pybullet interface.",

author = "Christopher Mower and Theodoros Stouraitis and Jo{\~a}o Moura and Christian Rauch and Lei Yan and {Zamani Behabadi}, Nazanin and Michael Gienger and Tom Vercauteren and Christos Bergeles and Sethu Vijayakumar",

year = "2022",

language = "English",

booktitle = "6th Annual Conference on Robot Learning",

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TY - CHAP

T1 - ROS-PyBullet Interface: A Framework for Reliable Contact Simulation and Human-Robot Interaction

AU - Mower, Christopher

AU - Stouraitis, Theodoros

AU - Moura, João

AU - Rauch, Christian

AU - Yan, Lei

AU - Zamani Behabadi, Nazanin

AU - Gienger, Michael

AU - Vercauteren, Tom

AU - Bergeles, Christos

AU - Vijayakumar, Sethu

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Reliable contact simulation plays a key role in the development of (semi-)autonomous robots, especially when dealing with contact-rich manipulation scenarios, an active robotics research topic. Besides simulation, components such as sensing, perception, data collection, robot hardware control, human interfaces, etc. are all key enablers towards applying machine learning algorithms or model-based approaches in real world systems. However, there is a lack of software connecting reliable contact simulation with the larger robotics ecosystem (i.e. ROS, Orocos), for a more seamless application of novel approaches, found in the literature, to existing robotic hardware. In this paper, we present the ROS-PyBullet Interface, a framework that provides a bridge between the reliable contact/impact simulator PyBullet and the Robot Operating System (ROS). Furthermore, we provide additional utilities for facilitating Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in the simulated environment. We also present several use-cases that highlight the capabilities and usefulness of our framework. Please check our video, source code, and examples included in the supplementary material. Our full code base is open source and can be found at github.com/cmower/ros pybullet interface.

AB - Reliable contact simulation plays a key role in the development of (semi-)autonomous robots, especially when dealing with contact-rich manipulation scenarios, an active robotics research topic. Besides simulation, components such as sensing, perception, data collection, robot hardware control, human interfaces, etc. are all key enablers towards applying machine learning algorithms or model-based approaches in real world systems. However, there is a lack of software connecting reliable contact simulation with the larger robotics ecosystem (i.e. ROS, Orocos), for a more seamless application of novel approaches, found in the literature, to existing robotic hardware. In this paper, we present the ROS-PyBullet Interface, a framework that provides a bridge between the reliable contact/impact simulator PyBullet and the Robot Operating System (ROS). Furthermore, we provide additional utilities for facilitating Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in the simulated environment. We also present several use-cases that highlight the capabilities and usefulness of our framework. Please check our video, source code, and examples included in the supplementary material. Our full code base is open source and can be found at github.com/cmower/ros pybullet interface.

M3 - Conference paper

BT - 6th Annual Conference on Robot Learning

ER -

ROS-PyBullet Interface: A Framework for Reliable Contact Simulation and Human-Robot Interaction

Abstract

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