Learning Pick-and-place

In this repository, we've published the code for our publication Self-supervised Learning for Precise Pick-and-place without Object Model. As only parts of the code were specifically written for this publication, we introduce the code structure regarding the overall project idea.

Click the image for a quick demonstration!

Structure

The overall structure is as follows:

• Scripts The main part of the project is written in Python. This includes the general program logic, calculating the next action with Tensorflow Keras, data management, learning, ...
• Learning The core part of this repository is learning for various tasks in robotic manipulation. All code for that lies within the scripts/learning directory.
• Database Server This is a database server for collecting and uploading data and images. The server has a web interface for showing all episodes in a dataset and displaying the latest action live.
• Include / Src The low-level control of the hardware, in particular for the robot and the cameras, written in C++. The robot uses MoveIt! for control. The camera drivers for Ensenso and RealSense are included, either via direct access or an optional ros node. The latter is helpful because the Ensenso needs a long time to connect and crashes sometimes afterwards.

This project is a ROS package with launch files and a package.xml. The ROS node /move_group is set to respawn=true. This enables to call rosnode kill /move_group to restart it.

Installation

For the robotic hardware, make sure to load launch/gripper-config.json as the Franka end-effector configuration. Currently, following dependencies need to be installed:

• ROS Kinetic
• libfranka & franka_ros
• EnsensoSDK

And all requirements for Python 3.6 via Pip and python3.6 -m pip install -r requirements.txt. Patching CvBridge for Python3 and CMake >= 3.12 is given by a snippet in GitLab. It is recommended to export to PYTHONPATH in .bashrc: export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:$HOME/Documents/bin_picking/scripts.

Start

For an easy start, run sh terminal-setup.sh for a complete terminal setup. Start the mongodb daemon. Then run roslaunch bin_picking moveit.launch, rosrun bin_picking grasping.py and check the database server.

Hyperparameters

Group	Parameter	Commonly used value
Manipulation Primitives	Pre-shaped gripper widths	[0.025, 0.05, 0.07, 0.086] m
	Grasp z-offset	0.015 m
	Place z-offset	-0.009 m
Experiment	Approach distance	0.12 m
	Image distance	0.35 m
	Box size	0.172 x 0.281 x 0.07 m
	Gripper force	20.0 N
	Change bins for grasping	True
	Bin empty at max grasp reward	0.1
	Change bins at failed grasps	12
	Number of selected grasp embeddings	200
	Number of selected place embeddings	200
	Bin empty at max grasp reward	0.1
Learning	Camera image size	752 x 480 px
	Window image size	200 x 200 px
	Scaled window image size	32 x 32 px
	Inference image size	110 x 110 px
	Grasp Loss Weight	1
	Place Loss Weight	1 + 5 * place_reward
	Merge Loss Weight	4 * (1 + 5 * place_reward)
	Embedding Size z	48
	Training Batch Size	64
	Optimizer	Adam with initial LR: 1e-4
	LR Scheduler	Reduce on plateau: Factor: 0.2, Patience: 20
	Neural Network Architecture	Source Code
Image Distribution	Use Hindsight	True
	Use Further Hindsight	True
	Use Negative Foresight	True
	Use Own Goal	True
	Use Different Goals	True
	Jittered Hindsight Images	3
	Jittered Hindsight Images (x-axis only)	3
	Jittered Goal Images	2
	Different Episodes Images	2
	Different Episodes Images (reward > 0)	4
	Different Object Images (reward > 0)	4
	Different Jittered Object Images (reward > 0)	0
	Jittered Pose Distribution	Triangular Low: 1 mm, 0.06 rad
	Jittered Pose Distribution	Triangular Mid: 6 mm, 0.32 rad
	Jittered Pose Distribution	Triangular High: 15 mm, 1.5 rad

Robot Learning Database

The robot learning database is a database, server and viewer for research around robotic grasping. It is based on MongoDB, Flask, Vue.js. It shows an overview of all episodes as well as live actions. It can also delete recorded episodes. The server can be started via python3.6 database/app.py, afterwards open localhost in your browser.