Constrain Joint in MoveIt

Question

Hi all!

I'm working on constraining joints in Moveit by expanding upon this tutorial. Below is a small reproduction of my code, as well as a copy of the error message I'm getting . From what I can tell I followed the moveit.msg documentation to the T. I'm running ROS melodic on Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS.

My Code:

 #!/usr/bin/env python

from move_group_python_interface_tutorial import *

import moveit_msgs.msg

from std_msgs.msg import Float64

def main():

    try:
        # This is just initializing the tutorial object
        tutorial = MoveGroupPythonIntefaceTutorial()

        # construct a message
        joint_constraint = moveit_msgs.msg.JointConstraint()
        joint_constraint.joint_name = tutorial.move_group.get_joints()[0]
        joint_constraint.position = Float64(1.0)
        joint_constraint.tolerance_above = Float64(0.5)
        joint_constraint.tolerance_below = Float64(0.5)
        joint_constraint.weight = Float64(1.0)

        joint_constraint_list = []
        joint_constraint_list.append(joint_constraint)

        constraint_list = moveit_msgs.msg.Constraints()
        constraint_list.name = 'middle_of_travel'
        constraint_list.joint_constraints = joint_constraint_list

        tutorial.move_group.set_path_constraints(constraint_list)

    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        return

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

My error message:

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/home/mike/catkin_ws/src/macs_gazebo_simulation/inspection_cell_moveit_config/test.py", line 33, in <module>
    main()

  File "/home/mike/catkin_ws/src/macs_gazebo_simulation/inspection_cell_moveit_config/test.py", line 27, in main
    tutorial.move_group.set_path_constraints(constraint_list)

  File "/opt/ros/melodic/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/moveit_commander/move_group.py", line 403, in set_path_constraints
    self._g.set_path_constraints_from_msg(conversions.msg_to_string(value))

  File "/opt/ros/melodic/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/moveit_commander/conversions.py", line 49, in msg_to_string
    msg.serialize(buf)

  File "/opt/ros/melodic/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/moveit_msgs/msg/_Constraints.py", line 469, in serialize
    except struct.error as se: self._check_types(struct.error("%s: '%s' when writing '%s'" % (type(se), str(se), str(locals().get('_x', self)))))

  File "/opt/ros/melodic/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/genpy/message.py", line 343, in _check_types
    raise SerializationError(str(exc))
genpy.message.SerializationError: <class 'struct.error'>: 'required argument is not a float' when writing 'joint_name: "linear_stage_joint"
position: 
  data: 1.0
tolerance_above: 
  data: 0.5
tolerance_below: 
  data: 0.5
weight: 
  data: 1.0'

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Originally posted by mgagnier93 on ROS Answers with karma: 1 on 2020-06-08

Post score: 0

Answer 1

You need to replace the lines like:

joint_constraint.position = Float64(1.0)

with

joint_constraint.position = 1.0

By calling Float64(1.0) you are creating a ROS message instance of type Float64, when what you really need is a Python float datatype. On the msg ROS wiki page there is documentation describing how primitive field types correspond to client library types for C++ and Python. That documentation indicates a field type of float64 in a message definition should be a float in Python.

The Float64 message from std_msgs actually has a single field named data of type float64. That's where the data: 1.0 lines in your traceback are coming from. Also note, the key part of your error is this:

genpy.message.SerializationError: <class 'struct.error'>: 'required argument is not a float'...

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Originally posted by jarvisschultz with karma: 9031 on 2020-06-08

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by mgagnier93 on 2020-06-08:
@jarvisschultz that makes perfect sense - fixed my issue. Thanks!