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ManiWare

| Reference docs | Introduction | Architecture | Installation | Case Studies

1. Introduction

ManiWare is an easy-to-use middleware that provides a team-level programming abstraction and the manipulator-level plugin mechanism for programming and building manipulator applications.

ManiWare provides a comprehensive set of functional components to allow developers to build cooperative manipulator applications. Specifically, the package allows you to

• Design team-level cooperation mechanism with task scheduler and optimizer
• Perform manipulator-level motion control with robot models and controllers
• Run experiments on your customized manipulator teams
• Perform realistic simulations with Pybullet simulation engine

2. Architecture

We propose the architecture and its underlying functional components, and the diagram are shown below:

3. Requirements and Installation

ManiWare requires Python3 and Pybullet to be installed on your system.

Please refer to the installation page for a more detailed installation guide.

To install the middleware, download the source code from

git clone https://github.com/sundyCoder/ManiWare .

4. Case Studies

We provide three case studies to show the basic features of ManiWare. Users can launch the applications directly.

Case study 1: Cooperative pick-and-place

cd example
python3 exp_pick_place.py

Case study 2: Cooperative object collection

cd example
python3 exp_collection.py

Case study 3: Dynamic Reconfiguration

cd example
python3 exp_dyn_reconf.py

5. Documentation

For the detailed information, please refer to ManiWare documentation.

6. Citation

If you use this middleware or benchmark in your research, please cite the paper and the extended version will be submitted to a Journal.

@article{chen2023maniware,
  title={ManiWare: An Easy-to-Use Middleware for Cooperative Manipulator Teams},
  author={Chen, Jinlin and Cao, Jiannong and Cheng, Zhiqin and Sahni, Yuvraj},
  journal={IEEE Internet of Things Journal},
  year={2023},
  publisher={IEEE}
}

7. License

This project is released under the Apache 2.0 license.