import rospy when calling a python script from a c++ executable

Question

I have a Robai Cyton gamma arm that I'm attempting to connect to with ROS by trying to call a Python script from a C++ program.

What I want to do is use C++ and OpenCV to get a video from an Xbox Kinect. From the kinect video I want to be able to click on a point in the image and send the x-y-z position (after converting them to my robot coordinate system) to a Python Script using OpenRave to figure out the inverse kinematics. After the position of my joint angles are known I want to use ROS to send them to the robot.

Currently, I can send the x-y-z locations and find the inverse kinematics no problem and everything works together nicely when I don't have import rospy in my python script(not trying to send the robot my joint angles). I also can move the robot with a different python script I have so I know I can connect with and move it.

Without the ROS commands to try to publish to the robot when I run the c++ exe I get the joint angles for the different links of my robot.

getIndicesFromJointNames [0] ['link1']
[ 1.          0.78545125  0.62655888  0.96602943  1.01751733  1.06180138
 -0.7132951 ]

When I add the command

import rospy 

and subsequently try to publish them to the robot

> rospy.init_node('shoulder_roll')   
> ...
> ...
pub = rospy.Publisher('/theta_2/command', Float64)
pub.publish(Float64(sol.item(1)))
pub = rospy.Publisher('/theta_3/command', Float64)
pub.publish(Float64(sol.item(2)*-1)) 
pub = rospy.Publisher('/theta_4/command', Float64)
pub.publish(Float64(sol.item(3)))
    

I get the error

 Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/nick/fuerte_workspace/Robai/bin/test.py", line 22, in run
    import rospy
  File "/opt/ros/fuerte/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/rospy/__init__.py", line 49, in <module>
    from .client import spin, myargv, init_node, \
  File "/opt/ros/fuerte/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/rospy/client.py", line 53, in <module>
    import rospy.core
  File "/opt/ros/fuerte/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/rospy/core.py", line 66, in <module>
    from rospy.names import *
  File "/opt/ros/fuerte/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/rospy/names.py", line 86, in <module>
    _mappings = load_mappings(sys.argv)
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'argv'

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated

Thanks, Nick

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Originally posted by nickd on ROS Answers with karma: 92 on 2013-08-05

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by mdtobi on 2013-12-06:
Hi Nick, Did you make any progress on this issue? I'm asking, because I'm receiving the same error while importing rospy in a c++ class. I've already looked into the names.py but the load_mappings object has an 'argv' attribute, so the error-message is kind of misguiding me. Kind regards, Tobi

Answer 1

Ok I just found the reason for this failure: You need to add PySys_SetArgv(argc, argv); right after Py_Initialize(); to assign the c++-arguments over to the Python interpreter which otherwise would be started without any arguments. After appending this line, sys.argv will be set and the rospy module would be loaded.

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Originally posted by mdtobi with karma: 36 on 2013-12-07

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 2