Skip to content

Tutorial 2: Launch system

Jump to bottom
Matthias Mayr edited this page Jul 1, 2023 · 3 revisions

In this tutorial we describe the parameters necessary to launch the main SkiROS nodes. All launch files are contained in skiros2/skiros2/launch folder.

Complete SkiROS system

The SkiROS2 architecture

The complete SkiROS system can be launched with the following:

roslaunch skiros2 skiros.launch

The launch file starts 4 main nodes: world model, skill manager, task manager, and GUI.

By default, the skill manager doesn't load any skill. See below how to load skills on the skill manager.

World model server

This node stores the ontology and the world model runtime instance.

<node launch-prefix="$(arg prefix)" name="wm" pkg="skiros2_world_model" type="world_model_server_node" respawn="true">
    <param name="workspace_dir" value="$(find my_package)/owl" />
    <arg name="init_scene" value="my_scene.turtle"/>
    <arg name="verbose" value="false"/>
    <arg name="reasoners_pkgs" value="[skiros2_std_reasoners]"/>
    <arg name="debug" value="$(arg debug)"/>
</node>

The parameters are the following:

  • workspace_dir, defines the workspace folder. All the ontology files (.owl) in the folder will be loaded in the world model (see Tutorial: Edit ontology for more info). The workspace is also use as folder to load and save the run-time scene.
  • init_scene, a scene to load at boot. The file must be in the directory specified in workspace_dir
  • verbose, if true more debug message will be printed
  • reasoners_pkgs, id of ROS packages containing reasoners for the world model.
  • debug, if true launches the node in the python debugger

Skill manager

This node load the skills related to a specific robotic system and offers services to start and stop them and monitor their execution.

  <include file="$(find skiros2)/launch/skill_mgr.launch">
      <arg name="verbose" value="false"/>
      <arg name="debug" value="false"/>
      <arg name="libraries_list" value="[my_package_name]"/>
      <arg name="primitive_list" value="[my_primitive1, my_primitive2]"/>
      <arg name="skill_list" value="[my_skill1, my_skill2]" />
      <arg name="robot_ontology_prefix" value="my_ontology"/>
      <arg name="robot_name" value="my_robot"/>
  </include>

Where the parameters are:

  • verbose, if true more debug message will be printed
  • debug, if true launches the node in the python debugger
  • libraries_list, names of packages defining skills or primitives
  • primitive_list, names of primitive skills to load.
  • skill_list, names of compound skills to load
  • robot_ontology_prefix, the name of the ontology defining the robot model (see Tutorial: Edit ontology for more info)
  • robot_name, the robot model to load in the world model
  • deploy, if false, run the node in a stand-alone xterm

Task manager

This node offers an action server to request a task planning. It automatically uses the world model instance as starting state and the available skills to setup the planning domain.

  <node launch-prefix="$(arg prefix)" name="tm" pkg="skiros2_task" type="task_manager_node" respawn="true">
    <param name="verbose" value="$(arg verbose)" />
  </node>

Where the parameters are:

  • verbose, if true more debug message will be printed

GUI launch

The GUI offers an user interface to edit the world model and control the skill execution. It currently support the execution of only one skill at a time. It is implemented as a plugin for rqt. The launch code looks like the following:

<node name="skiros_gui" pkg="rqt_gui" type="rqt_gui" args="-s gui.skiros" output="screen" />
Clone this wiki locally