Only released in EOL distros:   electric fuerte groovy

Note this wiki is for the deprecated Arm Navigation version of KinematicsBase. For the much newer MoveIt Kinematics Base, see this page.

This package provides a base class for implementing a kinematics plugin. As such, it only contains a single header file. Examples of plugin implementations for kinematics can be found in two packages:

1. pr2_arm_kinematics contains a plugin implementation of kinematics for the PR2 robot.

2. arm_kinematics_constraint_aware contains a more generic plugin implementation that can be configured for any serial manipulator.

Have a look at the documentation in the individual packages for more information on how to configure and use them.

Creating your own plugin implementation of kinematics

The code

You can create your own plugin implementation of kinematics - essentially a wrapper that wraps your custom kinematics solver by inheriting from the base class defined in this package. The typical procedure for this would be to create your own package (named example_kinematics) and have a dependency on both the kinematics_base and pluginlib packages.

Then, have a look at the Code API. You will need to implement all the pure virtual functions after inheriting from the base class.

Setting up the plugin

In addition to writing the code, you will also have to register the plugin to make sure it can be accessed from other packages. This involves several steps outlined below.

Setup the correct dependencies

Make sure you add the following lines to the manifest.xml file in example_kinematics.

 <depend package="pluginlib"/>
 <depend package="kinematics_base"/>

Setup the plugins file

In a file named example_plugins.xml in your example_kinematics package, add the following lines and modify them to match the names you have chosen for your components.

<library path="lib/libarm_kinematics_constraint_aware_lib">
  <class name="arm_kinematics_constraint_aware/KDLArmKinematicsPlugin" type="arm_kinematics_constraint_aware::KDLArmKinematicsPlugin" base_class_type="kinematics::KinematicsBase">
    <description>
      A generic implementation of kinematics as a plugin based on KDL.
    </description>
  </class>
</library>

1. Replace arm_kinematics_constraint_aware_lib with the name of the library object that contains your implementation of the kinematics. E.g. if you named your library example_kinematics, the first line above should read:

<library path="lib/libexample_kinematics">

1. Rename the class name to be namespace/class_name. E.g. if your code is in the namespace example_kinematics and you named your class ExampleKinematics, replace the class name with example_kinematics/ExampleKinematicsPlugin.

2. Rename the type to be namespace::class_name. E.g. example_kinematics::ExampleKinematicsPlugin.

Export the plugins file

In the manifest.xml file for example_kinematics, make sure the following lines are present in the export tag:

  <kinematics_base plugin="${prefix}/example_plugins.xml" />

Register the plugin in your code

In your .cpp file, make sure you have the following line at the top:

PLUGINLIB_DECLARE_CLASS(example_kinematics,ExampleKinematicsPlugin, example_kinematics::ExampleKinematicsPlugin, kinematics::KinematicsBase)