Two WidowX Leader Arms for Aloha Robotic Machine Learning Research
Reach
Span
Degrees of Freedom
Payload
The X-Series arms are made for the lab, our arms are intended to be worked on and we've made it as easy as possible to keep your manipulator up and running. Quickly and easily swap out motors that need to be replaced, lengthen or shorten the arm to your needs. Everything you need to repair your platform is kept in stock, making it easy to keep your equipment up and running with minimal downtime.
Packages for ROS and ROS 2 make it easy to get started with the arm. These packages include full meshes and URDFs (including accurate inertial models for the links), a driver node to control the physical robot arm and publish joint states, as well as simulation (Gazebo) and motion planning (MoveIt) support. Several example packages are also included to demonstrate the potential uses of the core packages.
MoveIt is the most widely used software for manipulation and has been used on over 150 robots. It is released under the terms of the BSD license, and thus free for industrial, commercial, and research use. By incorporating the latest advances in motion planning, manipulation, 3D perception, kinematics, control and navigation, MoveIt is state of the art software for mobile manipulation.
Robot simulation is an essential tool in every roboticist's toolbox. A well-designed simulator makes it possible to rapidly test algorithms, design robots, perform regression testing, and train AI system using realistic scenarios. Gazebo offers the ability to accurately and efficiently simulate populations of robots in complex indoor and outdoor environments. At your fingertips is a robust physics engine, high-quality graphics, and convenient programmatic and graphical interfaces. Best of all, Gazebo is free with a vibrant community.
Degrees of Freedom | 6 Degrees |
Reach | 650mm |
Span | 1300mm |
Repeatability | 1mm |
Accuracy | 5-8mm |
Working Payload | N/A to Leader Arm |
Interbotix | Yes |
Works with ROS 1/2 | Yes |
Works with MoveIt | Yes |
Works with Gazebo | Yes |
Works with Python-ROS | Yes |
Servos | 7X XM430-W350-T | 2X XL430-W250-T |
Communication Hub | DYNAMIXEL U2D2 |
Power Supply | 12 Volt - 5 Amp |
Tools and Bolts | All Included |
Wrist Rotate | Yes |
Weight | 3.8kg / 8.37lbs |
Be up and running in less than an hour with simple and intuitive command modules.
We use Python, one of the most widely adopted open-source programming languages, to build our ROS wrappers. Each ROS Wrapper is a lightweight module designed to create a hardware interoperability layer for easily interfacing with low-level ROS code.
The first software layer is where an end user programs their own code—for manipulation, navigation, computer vision, machine learning or some other application. For example, all the ROS packages and Python scripts within the interbotix_XXXX_examples directory (which exist in the repositories that build on top of this one) could be described as 'application' layer code.
The second software layer is optional and only exists to provide Python modules or 'support-level' ROS packages to make it easier for a researcher to work with the robot on a higher level. The main home for this type of code is in the interbotix_ros_toolboxes repository. For example, this is where all the Python modules used to control any of the robots (like inverse kinematics solvers, gripper controllers, hexapod walking-gait pattern generators, etc...) that build up from this repo live. That said, miscellaneous ROS packages like AR-tag detectors, 3D object pose estimators and similar that sits between a sensor's ROS wrapper and the final application could be said to live here as well.
The third software layer is a ROS package that exists for every genre of robot platform sold at Interbotix and lives in the various repos that build up from this one. It follows the naming convention interbotix_XXXXX_control, where XXXXX is replaced with the name of the robot platform. For example, in the X-Series Arms directory located in the interbotix_ros_manipulators repo, we have the interbotix_xsarm_control ROS package. This can be understood as the ROS package that allows a user to easily control/configure any of the many X-Series arms that we sell. The two main components of the package are the 'config' directory and the launch file. The 'config' directory stores YAML files that describe the parameters for all the actuators and sensors in the robot. The launch file is then responsible for passing those parameters to all the actuators/sensors in the robot and starting them up. In this manner, a ROS researcher only has to call one launch file to start a robot instead of multiple to start every actuator/sensor separately.
The fourth software layer contains the ROS wrappers for actuators and sensors plugged into the computer. These wrappers provide ROS interfaces to set or get data to/from the physical actuators or sensors. It essentially abstracts away all the lower-level 'plumbing' code (like serial protocols, register addresses, etc...) so that it's easy for a ROS researcher to get started on their project. As shown in the diagram, the interbotix_ros_core repo falls in this layer. However, third-party actuators or sensor ROS-wrappers (ex., around the Kobuki platform or RealSense camera devices) also fall in this layer.
This describes the physical setup of the robot - specifically, what actuators and/or sensors are plugged into the robot computer. The computer could be an Intel NUC, laptop, Raspberry Pi, or something else - as long as it's capable of running ROS. Below the 'Robot Computer' (on the left side) are the actuator interface, controller, or driver boards, followed by the physical motors. This could be a U2D2 or Arbotix board that controls Dynamixel servos or an Arduino that controls a motor driver that drives some hobby servos. Below the 'Robot Computer' (on the right side) are the sensor devices. This could be an Arduino hooked up to some force-sensing resistors, switches, potentiometers, or a RealSense camera.