Kinematics Simulation

About

This page documents how to run kinematics simulation of da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK). It is possible to run the dVRK in simulation mode on any computer as there is no need for a FireWire adapter.

The kinematic simulation mode uses the same software components and configuration files as the real arm except that the PID controller doesn't communicate with the hardware. Instead, measured position in the joint space are based on the last commanded joint values. This mode allows user to test their code with simple motion commands. In kinematic simulation mode, the dVRK software retains most of the graphical user interface (IO widgets are not available of course) as well as the ROS topics. One can use Rviz to visualize the arms in a virtual environment.

Build

Please follow the catkin build page to download and build the software stack.

Run the simulation

Please see dvrk_robot page for more details.

# NOTE
#  1) please use your own ROS workspace path
#  2) please use the right console json file (see sawIntuitiveResearchKit/share foler)

# MTML
roslaunch dvrk_robot dvrk_arm_rviz.launch arm:=MTML \
config:=/path/to/ros/workspace/src/cisst-saw/sawIntuitiveResearchKit/share/console-MTML_KIN_SIMULATED.json

# PSM1
roslaunch dvrk_robot dvrk_arm_rviz.launch arm:=PSM1 \
config:=/path/to/ros/workspace/src/cisst-saw/sawIntuitiveResearchKit/share/console-PSM1_KIN_SIMULATED.json

# ECM
roslaunch dvrk_robot dvrk_arm_rviz.launch arm:=ECM \
config:=/path/to/ros/workspace/src/cisst-saw/sawIntuitiveResearchKit/share/console-ECM_KIN_SIMULATED.json

Launch File & Configuration File

The dVRK kinematics simulation uses a simulated low-level hardware class and reuses rest of the code including the main executable dvrk_console_json, which can run a real or a simulated arm based on a configuration file in json format.

Here is a snippet from the launch file starting dvrk_console_json.

  <node name="dvrk_$(arg arm)_node"
        pkg="dvrk_robot"
        type="dvrk_console_json"
        args="-j $(arg config)"
        output="screen"/>

The example json configuration files are located in sawIntuitiveResearchKit/share folder. Below is the console-MTML_KIN_SIMULATED.json file. The simulation line indicates that this is a simulated MTM arm. For more details about the json file format, please refer to Config File Formats page.

{
    "arms":
    [
        {
            "name": "MTML",
            "type": "MTM",
            "simulation": "KINEMATIC",
            "pid": "sawControllersPID-MTML.xml",
            "kinematic": "mtm.json"
        }
    ]
}

Software API

For most users, please use the ROS interface. The dvrk_python or dvrk_matlab package would be a good starting place. Please refer to API page for more details.

# Example python code
import dvrk, crtk
ral = crtk.ral('test_node')
m = dvrk.mtm(ral, 'MTML')
m.home()
m.get_current_joint_position()
m.move_joint_one(0.2, 0)