march_hardware_builder¶

Overview¶

This package contains a library which can be included to create a MarchRobot from YAML config files and a robot description in URDF. Whereas the YAML describes some properties of the hardware used in the robot, the hardware builder uses the URDF for joint limits. The joints in the YAML and the URDF must match. The implementation is rather straightforward and nearly all the logic can be found in the HardwareBuilder class <march_hardware_builder/src/hardware_builder.cpp>.

ROS API¶

The hardware builder is written without depending on ROS for its core functionality to ensure that it can remain functional even when ROS will no longer be used. The package does depend on ROS for logging and the urdf ROS package for parsing URDF, but that can be easily changed if needed, since none of these functionalities are ROS specific.

Tutorials¶

Using the package¶

Add a dependency on this package to your project and #include <march_hardware_builder/hardware_builder.h> to start using the HardwareBuilder class <march_hardware_builder/include/march_hardware_builder/hardware_builder.h>.

There are four main ways to interact with the hardware builder:

Instantiate with an AllowedRobot:
```
HardwareBuilder hardwareBuilder = HardwareBuilder(AllowedRobot::march4);
marchRobot = hardwareBuilder.createMarchRobot();
```
A list of currently allowed robots can be seen in include/AllowedRobot.h <march_hardware_builder/include/march_hardware_builder/allowed_robot.h>

Instantiate with a path to a yaml file:

HardwareBuilder hardwareBuilder = HardwareBuilder("path/to/robot/march4.yaml");
marchRobot = hardwareBuilder.createMarchRobot();

An example yaml file can be seen in robots/march4.yaml <march_hardware_builder/robots/march4.yaml>

Instantiate empty. This function is mostly used for testing wrongly configured robots and is not needed in a release.

Note

This means you are responsible for passing a YAML::Node to the .createMarchRobot() function!
```
YAML::Node robotConfig = YAML::LoadFile("path/to/robot.yaml");
HardwareBuilder hardwareBuilder = HardwareBuilder();
marchRobot = hardwareBuilder.createMarchRobot(robotConfig);
```

It is also possible to create parts of a MarchRobot (IMotionCubes, Encoders, etc…) in a similar way.

YAML::Node encoderConfig = YAML::LoadFile("path/to/encoder.yaml");
HardwareBuilder hardwareBuilder = HardwareBuilder();
marchRobot = hardwareBuilder.createEncoder(encoderConfig);