iRobot Create Python Example

Currently Robot Raconteur is not natively supported by commercial hardware so it is necessary to “wrap” the provided APIs with a Robot Raconteur service. For this example, we are going to wrap the serial Create Open Interface (OI) with a service. The sample code is by no means exhaustive of all the capabilities the robot has to offer; it is intended to be instructive on the use of Robot Raconteur. The user is encouraged to fill out the functionality by adding more members to the service definition!

Simple service

The first step in using Robot Raconteur is to develop an object that implements the service definition. The following example shows a non-Robot Raconteur program that contains a class Create_impl that implements the service definition “experimental.create2” presented in Service Definition. Table Members lists the members and the functionality that will be implemented.

import serial
import struct
import time
import RobotRaconteur as RR
#Convenience shorthand to the default node.
#RRN is equivalent to RR.RobotRaconteurNode.s
RRN=RR.RobotRaconteurNode.s
import thread
import threading

serial_port_name="/dev/ttyUSB0"

class Create_impl(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.Bump=RR.EventHook()
        self._lock=threading.RLock()
        self._packets=None
        self._play_callback=None

    def Drive(self, velocity, radius):
        with self._lock:
            dat=struct.pack(">B2h",137,velocity,radius)
            self._serial.write(dat)

    def StartStreaming(self):
        pass

    def StopStreaming(self):
        pass

    @property
    def DistanceTraveled(self):
        return 0;

    @property
    def AngleTraveled(self):
        return 0;

    @property
    def Bumpers(self):
        return 0;

    @property
    def play_callback(self):
        return self._play_callback;
    @play_callback.setter
    def play_callback(self,value):
        self._play_callback=value

    def Init(self,port):
        self._serial=serial.Serial(port="/dev/ttyUSB0",baudrate=57600)
        dat=struct.pack(">2B",128,131)
        self._serial.write(dat)

    def Shutdown(self):
        self._serial.close()

def main():

    #Initialize the object in the service
    obj=Create_impl()
    obj.Init(serial_port_name)

    #Drive a bit to show that it works
    obj.Drive(200,1000)
    time.sleep(1)
    obj.Drive(0,0)

    #Shutdown
    obj.Shutdown()



if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Members of Create object

Member	Description
function void Drive(int16 velocity, int16 radius)	Drives the create at velocity (mm/s) with radius (mm)
function void StartStreaming()	Starts the sensor packet streaming (Bumpers (17), Distance Traveled (19), Angle Traveled (20))
function void StopStreaming()	Stops the sensor packet streaming
property int32 DistanceTraveled	Total distance traveled (doesn’t seem to be accurate…)
property int32 AngleTraveled	Total angle traveled (doesn’t seem to be accurate…)
property uint8 Bumpers	Returns the byte with flags about the state of the bumper and wheel drops (See OI manual sensor packet id 7)
event Bump()	Event fired when the bumper goes from no contact to contact
pipe SensorPacket packets	Provides a stream of the raw sensor information as it is received. The ID is always 19. The rest of the packet is the sensor data followed by checksum. The “nBytes” field is not included.
callback uint8[] play_callback(int32 DistanceTraveled, int32 AngleTraveled)	A callback that is called when the “Play” button is pressed and returns notes to play on the Create.

The above example shows the members implemented, but not yet exposed as a service. Properties and functions are simply properties and functions in Python, events are implemented through the EventHook class that must be present as a variable in the class. The Wire and Callback objects are implemented as properties and initialized to None and will be set by the Robot Raconteur node when the object is exposed as a service. The main function in this example will drive the robot a few feet to demonstrate that the service works. Replace “/dev/ttyUSB0” with the appropriate device (COM1, COM2, etc on Windows). The class shown above is mostly a skeleton class that needs to be filled in further to have functionality beyond simply driving.

The function “Drive” has a with self._lock block protecting the code within the function. Robot Raconteur is multi-threaded, meaning that all members including functions can be called concurrently. If there is an operation or data structure that can be corrupted by simultaneous access, it is necessary to use a thread lock, also-known-as a mutex. In the __init__ for class Create_impl, the self._lock variable is set to a new instance of threading.RLock(). When used with the with statement, it will lock itself so only one block can execute at a time with one thread. If all the functions in the class use the same “with lock”, only one thread at a time will be able to access the class. If you are not familiar with multi-threading, it is best to have one global lock for all your functions to prevent collisions.

Now that there is a basic object implemented, it is time to expose it as a Robot Raconteur service. The following example shows a replacement for the main function that instead of simply driving the robot, exposes the service.

def main():

    obj=Create_impl()
    comm_port=sys.argv[1]
    obj.Init(comm_port)

    with RR.ServerNodeSetup("experimental.create2.Create",2354):

        RRN.RegisterServiceTypeFromFile("experimental.create2")
        RRN.RegisterService("Create","experimental.create2.Create",obj)

        raw_input("Server started, press enter to quit...")

        obj.Shutdown()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

A Robot Raconteur node requires a few steps to initialize the service:

1. Use ServerNodeSetup to initialize the node. Use the with statement so it will also automatically shut down the node. The setup classes will also automatically check command line arguments to modify options for the node.

2. Register the relevant service types (robdef)

3. Register the root object for the service

Each Robot Raconteur node is uniquely identified by a 128-bit UUID “NodeID”. UUIDs are a widely used concept, and are statistically guaranteed to be unique when randomly generated (See Wikipedia UUID for more information on UUIDs.) A node also has a name, the “NodeName”. A “NodeName” is intended to help clients find relevant services, and is not guaranteed to be unique. For client nodes, the “NodeID” is typically allowed to be automatically generated when needed, with the “NodeName” left emtpy. For a server node, the “NodeName” is normally specified, with the “NodeID” retrieved from a local cache based on the “NodeName”. The “NodeID” is randomly generated the first time the “NodeName” is used, and is retrieved from the cache subsequently. TLS certificates for Robot Raconteur are assigned to the “NodeID”, and guarantee the identify of the node based on its “NodeID”.

“Transports” are used to communicate between nodes. The currently available transports are TcpTransport for communication over a TCP/IP network, LocalTransport for communication between nodes running on the same computer, and HardwareTransport for communication over USB, Bluetooth, and PCIe, and IntraTransport for communication within the same process. For most server nodes, the TcpTransport and LocalTransport are configured to listen for incoming clients. The TcpTransport will listen for connections on a TCP port, while the LocalTransport listens for connections on a file handle that is identified by the “NodeName” or “NodeID” of the server node. If a TLS certificate is available, it can be loaded into the TCP transport. This is done using command line arguments to the node, or using SecureServerNodeSetup.

For most use cases, the Python class ServerNodeSetup can be used to initialize the server node. The ServerNodeSetup takes the “NodeName”, the TCP listen port, and an optional set of flags as parameters. In Python, the ServerNodeSetup is used with the with statement. When the with statement scope is exited, the node is shut down.

Service types (stored in robdef files) can either be included in the Python source file as strings, or can be loaded from file. In this example, the service definition is loaded from a file using the RRN.RegisterServiceDefinitionFromFile function.

Once the identification and transports have been initialized, the object is registered for use. The first parameter in RRN.RegisterService is the name of the service, the second parameter is the fully qualified Robot Raconteur type of the object, and the last parameter is the object to expose as a service. (Note that a node can have multiple services registered as long as they have different names).

After initialization, the program waits for the user to press “Enter” to stop the server. The service is now available for use by a client!

Simple client

While there are several steps to starting a service, connecting as a client is very simple. The following is an example of driving the robot over a network using the service example above:

from RobotRaconteur.Client import *

#Connect to the service
obj=RRN.ConnectService("rr+tcp://101.2.2.2?service=Create")

#Drive a bit
obj.Drive(200,1000)
time.sleep(1)
obj.Drive(0,0)

The example registers uses the RobotRaconteur.Client convenience module to configure for the most common client operations. This module creates a variable “RR” that contains the Robot Raconteur module, and “RRN” that is the default node. It also registers the transports TcpTransport, LocalTransport, HardwareTransport, and IntraTransport.

Robot Raconteur uses URLs to connect to services. The most common URLs are for local and TCP cases.

The url format for the LocalTransport is:

rr+local:///?nodename=TargetNodeName&service=ServiceName

and the url format for the TcpTransport is:

rr+tcp://hostname:port?service=ServiceName

The standard URL format is used, and the target service is passed as part of the “query” portion of the URL. Often it is necessary to specify the node to connect. For instance, the local transport requires the “nodename” to be specified because there can be multiple nodes running locally. The target node can be identified by NodeName, by NodeID, or by both. The NodeID should be the UUID of the node without curly braces. This is due to the limitations of URL syntax.

For instance, these are all valid URLs for the local transport to connect to the CreateService (replace the UUID with the one generated for your service):

rr+local:///?nodename=experimental.create.Create&service=Create

rr+local:///?nodeid=6f6706c9-91cc-d448-ae8c-c5a2acac198c&service=Create

rr+local:///?nodeid=6f6706c9-91cc-d448-ae8c-c5a2acac198c&nodename=experimental.create.Create&service=Create

The following are valid URLs to connect to the CreateServer using tcp:

rr+tcp://localhost:2354/?service=Create

rr+tcp://localhost:2354/?nodename=experimental.create.Create&service=Create

rr+tcp://localhost:2354/?nodeid=6f6706c9-91cc-d448-ae8c-c5a2acac198c&service=Create

rr+tcp://localhost:2354/?nodeid=6f6706c9-91cc-d448-ae8c-c5a2acac198c&nodename=experimental.create.Create&service=Create

Replace “localhost” with the IP address or hostname of a foreign computer if accessing over a network.

Note that for the TCP connections, the “rr+tcp” can be connected to “rrs+tcp” to enable TLS to encrypt the communication. See the Robot Raconteur Security using TLS and Certificates manual for details on using TLS.

See Robot Raconteur URLs for details on how to use URLs for more advanced cases.

A reference to the service object is returned, and it can now be used to access the members. In this example, the robot is driven a bit to demonstrate how to use a function.

iRobot Create Service

The initial service shown above only fills in the Drive member. The example iRobotCreateService.py on GitHub shows a complete service that fills in all of the members. This is not intended to be exhaustive for the full features of the iRobot Create; it is instead intended to be used to demonstrate features of Robot Raconteur. Because of the length of the code it is printed in the appendix and will be referred to throughout this section.

The functions StartStreaming and StopStreaming start and stop a thread that receives data from the serial port and transmits the data to the Bump event, the packets pipe, or the play_callback where appropriate. The StartStreaming and StopStreaming functions also send commands to the Create robot to start or stop sending the data. The function _recv_thread implements the ability to receive and parse the packets. This function is dedicated to handling the serial data from the robot and calls the _fire_Bump function to fire the Bump event, the _SendSensorPacket function to set the new value of the packets wire, or the _play function to handle when the Play button is pressed on the robot. It also keeps a running tally of distance and angle traveled in the _DistanceTraveled and _AngleTraveled variables. The rest of this section will discuss the implementation of the different members. It stores the Bump data in the _Bumpers variable.

The Bumpers, DistanceTraveled, and AngleTraveled properties are implemented as standard Python properties using the @Property decorator. Because these are read only, the setters throw an exception. Properties transparently transmit exceptions back to the client. Functions also transparently transmit exceptions to the client. All Robot Raconteur calls should be surrounded with try/except blocks that catch Exception meaning it will catch and process any thrown exception.

Events in Python are implemented using the EventHook() class. The __init__ function of

Create_impl sets:

self.Bump==RR.EventHook()

This line creates the EventHook object that is used to connect events. The fire_Bump function then fires this event. The Robot Raconteur node will transmit this event to all connected clients. Note that the fire command of EventHook may contain parameters if the event has parameters.

The packets wire is implemented by the node when the object is registered as a service. Because the wire is marked readonly using a member modifier and the packets object attribute is not set, the node will assume that we want a WireBroadcaster. The node will create the attribute and assign a WireBroadcaster. The WireBroadcaster class is designed to send the same value to all connected clients. If the wire is marked writeonly, the node will provide a WireUnicastReceiver object. If the wire does not specify a direction, A WireServer is passed to the object through a property, which must be implemented by the object to receive the WireServer.

The _SendSensorPackets function is called by the serial receive thread when there is a new data packet. The _SendSensorPackets uses the OutValue of the WireBroadcaster to send the new value to all connected clients. The packet data is stored in a experimental.create.SensorPacket structure that is defined in the service definition. The RRN.NewStructure command is used to initialize a new Robot Raconteur structure in Python. If there is an error, assume that the wire has been closed and delete it from the dictionary.

Wires use the InValue and OutValue in WireConnection to send and receive values. For a readonly wire, the client will use the InValue while the service will use the OutValue property. Fir a writeonly wire, these roles are reversed and the client will use the OutValue property while the service will use the InValue property. If the wire does not specify the direction, both the client and service can use InValue and OutValue.

As of Version 0.9, wire clients can also “peek” and “poke” values. The peek and poke read the value synchronously without creating a streaming connection. (The behavior of “peek” and “poke” is similar to the behavior of properties.) PeekInValue is used to read the in value, while PeekOutValue and PokeOutValue are used to read and write the out value. (The “in” and “out” directions in the peek/poke functions are relative to the client.)

WireConnection also has the LastValueReceivedTime and LastValueSentTime to determine the last time that values were updated. These are relative to InValue and OutValue when using streaming data, and are received from the peek and poke functions as part of the return from the functions.

The play_callback member is assigned to the texttt_play_callback attribute of the Create_impl object by the node when the object is registered as a service. The _play function demonstrates how to use the callback. The StartStreaming command contains the following line:

self._ep=RR.ServerEndpoint.GetCurrentEndpoint()

This line is used to determine the “endpoint” of the current client that is calling the function. The endpoint is used to uniquely identify the client. When a callback is used, it is necessary to specify which client to call because there may be multiple connected clients. The client is identified using the endpoint. The _play function contains the following lines, which executes the callback on the client:

cb_func=self.play_callback.GetClientFunction(self._ep)

notes=cb_func(self._DistanceTraveled, self._AngleTraveled)

The first line retrieves the a function handle to call the client based on the stored endpoint. The second line executes this function, which is actually implemented by calling the client with the supplied parameters and then returning the result. Note that exceptions are also transmitted transparently by callbacks from the client to the service.

The ServerNodeSetup class by default will call EnableNodeAnnounce. This initializes the auto-discovery system to send out beacon packets so that client nodes can find the service.

iRobot Create Client

An example client iRobotCreateClient.py on GitHub utilizes the service. The client is similar to the previous example client, however it adds functionality using the Bump, packets, and play_callback member. The line:

c.Bump += Bumped

adds the function Bumped as a handler when the event is fired. The line:

wire=c.packets.Connect()

connects to the packets wire and returns a WireConnection object that is stored in the wire variable. This WireConnection has the same functionality as the one provided to the service object in the previous section. In this example, the WireValueChange event is used. The line:

wire.WireValueChanged+=wire_changed

adds the wire_changed function as a handler and is called when the service provides a new value for the wire. This event is also available on the service however in this application it is not needed. The final step in the configuration is to set the function play_callback as the callback function for the play_callback member through the following line:

c.play_callback.Function=play_callback

This function will now be called by the service when the service calls this client’s callback.

After the setup the robot is driven a bit and then pauses to allow the user to try out the functionality. The RobotRaconteurNode is shutdown automatically when the program exits.