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Use the household_objects_database remotely from different server

Description: Shows how to use the household_object_database remotely, by using the services provided by a database wrapper node running on a remote server.

Tutorial Level: BEGINNER

Important Information

Note that remote read-only access to a server hosted at Willow Garage is no longer officially supported. The infrastructure is still available, but the overhead of keeping the ROS wrapper always up at Willow ended up being too high.

If you'd like to set up that service for yourself, this is the documentation for the client side.

=== Launching the local client===

All you have to do to use the household_objects_database remotely is to launch the following file on your local machine, after starting a ROS master:

roslaunch household_objects_database objects_database_remote_client.launch

This will tell your ROS master that the database services should be sent to a remote ROS master running on a server at Willow Garage. The following services get remapped:

• /objects_database_node/database_grasp_planning

• /objects_database_node/get_model_description

• /objects_database_node/get_model_list

• /objects_database_node/get_model_mesh

Testing and troubleshooting

To test that this is working, try the following command:

rosservice call /objects_database_node/get_model_list REDUCED_MODEL_SET

The reply should be along the lines of:

return_code: 
  code: -1
model_ids: [18800, 18798, 18665, 18685, 18802, 18746, 18766, 18783, 18765, 18791, 18799, 18693, 18744, 18807, 18808, 18699, 18691]

If instead you get an error like:

ERROR: Unable to communicate with service [/objects_database_node/get_model_description], address [rosrpc://grasp.willowgarage.com:15432]

this might mean that either your machine does not have access to the Internet, or the remote server is down. Please send an email to the ros-users list informing us of the problem.

To get all the objects use the following command:

rosservice call /objects_database_node/get_model_list ""

Advanced testing

To test that the grasp planning service is working, you can use the following command:

rosservice call /objects_database_node/database_grasp_planning "{arm_name: right_arm, target: {potential_models: [model_id: 18665] } }"

You should get back a long lists of grasps, all of them looking something like this:

    pre_grasp_posture: 
      header: 
        seq: 0
        stamp: 
          secs: 0
          nsecs: 0
        frame_id: ''
      name: ['r_gripper_l_finger_joint', 'r_gripper_r_finger_joint', 'r_gripper_r_finger_tip_joint', 'r_gripper_l_finger_tip_joint']
      position: [0.52359900000000004, 0.52359900000000004, 0.52359900000000004, 0.52359900000000004]
      velocity: []
      effort: []
    grasp_posture: 
      header: 
        seq: 0
        stamp: 
          secs: 0
          nsecs: 0
        frame_id: ''
      name: ['r_gripper_l_finger_joint', 'r_gripper_r_finger_joint', 'r_gripper_r_finger_tip_joint', 'r_gripper_l_finger_tip_joint']
      position: [0.39125900000000002, 0.39125900000000002, 0.39125900000000002, 0.39125900000000002]
      velocity: []
      effort: [10000.0, 10000.0, 10000.0, 10000.0]
    grasp_pose: 
      position: 
        x: -0.121641
        y: 0.09348
        z: 0.125899
      orientation: 
        x: -0.919996
        y: 0.336396
        z: 0.187844
        w: 0.0718267