ControlIt! — A Software Framework for Whole-Body Operational Space Control

Abstract

Whole Body Operational Space Control (WBOSC) enables floating-base highly redundant robots to achieve unified motion/force control of one or more operational space objectives while adhering to physical constraints. It is a pioneering algorithm in the field of human-centered Whole-Body Control (WBC). Although there are extensive studies on the algorithms and theory behind WBOSC, limited studies exist on the software architecture and APIs that enable WBOSC to perform and be integrated into a larger system. In this paper, we address this by presenting ControlIt!, a new open-source software framework for WBOSC. Unlike previous implementations, ControlIt! is multi-threaded to increase maximum servo frequencies using standard PC hardware. A new parameter binding mechanism enables tight integration between ControlIt! and external processes via an extensible set of transport protocols. To support a new robot, only two plugins and a URDF model is needed — the rest of ControlIt! remains unchanged. New WBC primitives can be added by writing Task or Constraint plugins. ControlIt!’s capabilities are demonstrated on Dreamer, a 16-DOF torque controlled humanoid upper body robot containing both series elastic and co-actuated joints, and using it to perform a product disassembly task. Using this testbed, we show that ControlIt! can achieve average servo latencies of about 0.5[Formula: see text]ms when configured with two Cartesian position tasks, two orientation tasks, and a lower priority posture task. This is 10 times faster than the 5[Formula: see text]ms that was achieved using UTA-WBC, the prototype implementation of WBOSC that is both application and platform-specific. Variations in the product’s position is handled by updating the goal of the Cartesian position task. ControlIt!’s source code is released under LGPL and we hope it will be adopted and maintained by the WBC community for the long term as a platform for WBC development and integration.