Manipulator Force Feedback

Overview

Each joint of the manipulator arm has a force-torque (FT) sensor. Each of those sensors provide a 6 readings, x,y,z forces and x,y,z torques. The purpose of these sensors is to provide as much feedback as possible to the operators when manipulating the arm in the low visibility under-water environment.

Location of the sensors

For the oberon7 manipulator arm there are <#> FT sensors located at the following joints:

To see these joints in Gazebo, you can turn on the transparency and joints from the view menu.
showing the view menu.

showing the joints and their names.

Spring demo

The demo sets up an underwater world with a springy plate that demonstrate the functionality of the FT sensors. To run the demo launch the following command.
roslaunch uuv_dave uuv_manipulator_spring_demo.launch
Once Gazebo launches, you will see the rexrov UUV in-front of a springy plate.
Run the following launch command to show an rqt plotter showing the current forces on the gripper joint.plot_manipulator.launch You can see the status of the other joints by writing their topic names and clicking the + button. Here is the format for the topic names for the FT sensors. You can watch [this](add link) video that demonstrates the feedback functionality in this spring world.