Home

Modulo

Modulo is a software architecture to design control loop for robotic systems. It is based on the definition of modules communicating with each other to facilitate the implementation of closed loop control architecture. Each module has a specific function such as being an interface to a robot or a sensor, or modulate an input signal. The core library modulo_core implements multiple abstract classes you can inherit from to develop your own module.

The communication between the modules is based on ROS2. Each module inherits from the lifecycle interface allowing the creation of state based control scheme. Exchanging messages has been simplified and is asynchronous (cf. modulo_core documentation for control loop examples).

There are a few standalone libraries developed as helpers for communication and design of control loops. For example, the state_representation library provides classes to represent states (pose, velocities, ...) in cartesian, joint and dual quaternion spaces. The dynamical_systems library is a set of templated classes representing dynamical systems. Used in complement of the state_representation library it can generate dynamical system in the previously mentioned spaces.

You can build a complete working environment using docker. Simply run sh build.sh to build an image based on ros2:nightly docker image. This will create an image called modulo. Running sh run.sh opens an interactive shell with a ros2_ws allowing you to compile and run your modules. When creating a new module, we recommend you to create a new docker image on top of the modulo one. This way you will have all the libraries already installed while being able to create you own packages.