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Introduction

This package allows to control a Lewansoul xArm robot from a Linux PC with ROS. It uses the HID interface between your PC and the Arduino board imbedded in the xArm. Said Arduino board then communicates with the servos (6 of them, LX 15 D) using a serial TTL UART connection. It is also possible to communicate directly with the servo units with a serial communication (and bypass the arduino board on the base) but this is not supported by the code in this repository.

To note, the arm is sometimes listed as a 6-DOF robot (degree of freedom) but it is actually a 5 DOF + 1 for the gripper. So it is an under actuated arm and one can't reach all possible 3D positions/orientations.

If you find bugs or want to add some extra features, don't hesitate to create a pull request :-)

Naming convention is loosely based on CRTK: https://github.com/collaborative-robotics/documentation/wiki/Robot-API-motion

Requirements

Software

Code tested on Linux Ubuntu 18.04 using Python 2. The following packages are required:

sudo apt install libhidapi-hidraw0 libhidapi-libusb0 python-hid
pip install --user easyhid

Permissions

The HID device is created with the permissions root.root, 0600 by default which means that users can communicate with the robot unless they escalate to root privileges (sudo).

To avoid this you should create a udev rule. To get the proper attributes, you must first identify the hidraw device created for your device. You can use dmesg -w in a shell and then plug/power on the arm. Let's assume it's hidraw3 and launch sudo udevadm info --attribute-walk /dev/hidraw3 | less.

You can create a rule using the product name since it seems specific enough to identify the xArm Arduino board. Create the file /etc/udev/rules.d/80-usb-xarm.rules with the content SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", ATTRS{product}=="LOBOT", GROUP="dialout", MODE="0660" (note that all users will need to be members of the group dialout). To apply the rules without rebooting: sudo udevadm control --reload-rules and sudo udevadm trigger (this is a one time setup).

hidraw device not created properly

The last issue is a lot more annoying and we don't have a good fix. From time to time, the hidraw device is not properly created. I found an error message in /var/log/syslog related to FuEngine. This seems to be a feature to automatically check/upgrade a device's firmware. The only way we found to avoid this is to disable the service fwupd using sudo service fwupd stop (has to be done after every reboot) or sudo apt remove fwupd (completely remove fwupd). If anyone has a better solution, please raise your hand.

Build

cd ~/catkin_ws/src
catkin build

Usage

This is for the low-level controller, i.e. not using ROS. This code allows to create an "arm" using any subset of servos (in the example, I randomly used 5, 4 and 3). In practice, this allows to create a first group of 5 servos (the kinematic part of the arm) and a second group with one servo (the gripper). The ROS example below handles the grouping and also includes URDF import for the kinematic part.

import math
import lewansoul_xarm
c = lewansoul_xarm.controller()
HIDDevice:
    /dev/hidraw3 | 483:5750 | MyUSB_HID | LOBOT | 49770F673737
    release_number: 513
    usage_page: 0
    usage: 0
    interface_number: 0
connected to xArm controller serial number: 49770F673737
a = c.add_arm(5, 4, 3)
a.disable() # turn off servos
# now manually move the arm to zero position
a.calibrate() # this is a one time thing, you can re-use the calibration later on
a.home()
a.is_homed()
p = a.measured_jp()
p[0] = p[0] + math.pi / 4.0 # start with a small motion
a.move_jp(p)

ROS notes

sudo apt install ros-melodic-joint-state-publisher-gui

To start the controller ROS node:

rosrun lewansoul_xarm xArm-ros.py

The ROS node is defined in scripts/xArm-ros.py. It treats the first 5 servos as a kinematic chain and the last servo is used for the gripper.

To calibrate (this has to be done for /xArm and /gripper):

# disable servos so user can move the arm manually
rostopic pub -1 /xArm/disable std_msgs/Empty "{}"
# now move the arm to mechanical zero position...
# once done, initiate calibration.   This will save the joint offsets
rostopic pub -1 /xArm/calibrate std_msgs/Empty "{}"
# and now re-enable the arm.  It is now ready to use...
rostopic pub -1 /xArm/enable std_msgs/Empty "{}"

Calibration results are saved in files and can be reloaded automatically. The calibration files should be uniquely named using the controller's serial number and arm name.

For RViz:

roslaunch lewansoul_xarm display.launch

Links

Hardware

Software