New package: ati_force_torque

General
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Hello folks,

during work on force controlled robots (manipulators and mobile platforms) Intelligent Industrial Robotics (IIROB) extended a driver for Schunk-FTS (with ATI electronics) which communicates over CAN-Bus. We find the package very useful in our research and projects so hopefully will be also useful for you.

Some important features explained in the documentation on ROS-wiki:

The ati_force_torque package provides a ROS interface for an ATI force/torque sensor that is connected over CAN-bus. The most important features of this package are:

  1. 2 ROS Nodes one for configuration and one for reading of sensor.
  2. Implemenation of hardware_interface::ForceTorqueSensorHandle for using sensor in ros_control.
  3. Sampling the sensor on ca. 800 Hz and downsample to desied freqency
  4. Automatic calibration of sensor upon start.
  5. Definition of static calibration offsets.
  6. Integration of filters: ThresholdFilter, LowPassFilter, MovingMeanFilter and GravityCompensation (from iirob_filters package).

This package is builds upon the original cob_forcetorque written in 2011 and not updated since than.For can interfacing the CAN devices cob_generic_can package is used.

Best,

Denis

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