hxdaze / ikfast_pybind

Ikfast python binding modules built with a CMake-based build system

ikfast_pybind

ikfast_pybind is a python binding generation library for the analytic kinematics engine IKfast. The python bindings are generated via pybind11 a CMake-based build system.

Note: You need the ikfast .h and .cpp ready to generate the python bindings. This URDF-to-cpp generation part needs to be done with openrave and IS NOT done by this repo, please see this tutorial for details.

The assembly sequence and motion planning framework pychoreo relies on this library to generate compatible IK modules for robots across brands, scales, and dofs.

Prerequisites

ikfast_pybind depends on the following dependencies, which come from pybind11 for building the python bindings.

On Unix (Linux, OS X)

• A compiler with C++11 support
• CMake >= 2.8.12

On Windows

• Visual Studio 2015 (required for all Python versions, see notes below)
• CMake >= 3.1

It is recommended (especially for Windows users) to test the environment with the cmake_example for pybind11 before proceeding to build conmech.

Installation

git clone --recursive https://github.com/yijiangh/ikfast_pybind
cd ikfast_pybind
pip install .
# try with '--user' if you encountered a sudo problem

For developers:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/yijiangh/ikfast_pybind
cd ikfast_pybind
python setup.py sdist
pip install --verbose dist/*.tar.gz

With the setup.py file included in the base folder, the pip install command will invoke CMake and build the pybind11 module as specified in CMakeLists.txt.

References

Citation

If you find IKFast useful, please cite OpenRave:

@phdthesis{diankov_thesis,
  author = "Rosen Diankov",
  title = "Automated Construction of Robotic Manipulation Programs",
  school = "Carnegie Mellon University, Robotics Institute",
  month = "August",
  year = "2010",
  number= "CMU-RI-TR-10-29",
  url={http://www.programmingvision.com/rosen_diankov_thesis.pdf},
}

Related links

tutorial on ikfast cpp generation: See this tutorial for a detailed instruction on how to generate the ikfast cpp code from an URDF.

Testing ikfast modules with a pick-n-place demo in pybullet

pybind11