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ROS Trees: Behaviour Trees for robotic systems

ROS Trees makes behaviour trees accessible in ROS ecosystems, bringing all the compositional benefits of behaviour trees while facilitating interactions with the underlying state of robotic systems. We build on top of the capabilities provided by py_trees, with these extra features:

• ROS-specific leaves for all common interfaces (i.e. action servers, services, publishers, subscribers)
• Automatic, and configurable, data passing between consecutive leaves (e.g. pass an object detector leaf's output to a motion controller leaf with zero code)
• Heavily configurable leaf definitions, with most custom leaves only requiring a few lines of code
• Fine-grained leaf lifecycle, with simple interfaces for customisation (see leaf anatomy)
• Automatic translation when passing similar data between leaves (e.g. convert a suggested grasp pose into a navigation goal with zero code)

This package has been used on a number of real world robots, allowing us to combine a range of useful robot capabilities into significant robot behaviours. Featured works include:

• Holistic Mobile Manipulation (shown above);
• a lunar rover demonstration;
• a logistic robot prototype for space applications;
• an autonomous robotic platform for greenhouses;
• robot manipulators for industrial applications at the Australian Cobotics Centre;
• research results on applying re-usable behaviour trees generated from natural language instruction;
• multiple demonstrators of robot capabilities shown to QCR labe visitors; and
• the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision (ACRV) entry in the 2019 RoboCup@Home competition.

We are always interested in hearing about where our software is used. If you've used ROS Trees in your work, we'd love to hear more about how it was used.

Using Leaves with ROS

All the work for interfacing with ROS topics, Services, and Action Servers is already done for you in ros_trees.leaves_ros.*. It provides the following leaves, which extend the functionality of the base Leaf class described below:

• ActionLeaf: calls a ROS Action Server with namespace action_namespace
• PublisherLeaf: publishes a message on topic topic_name with type topic_class
• ServiceLeaf: calls a ROS Service with service name service_name
• SubscriberLeaf: receives a message on topic topic_name with type topic_class

ROS can be tedious when it comes to passing data between processes. For example, a service response with a PoseStamped field (e.g. MyServiceResponse) and an Action Server with a PoseStamped goal field (e.g. MyActionGoal) cannot be used interchangeably. A manual conversion of output to input is needed even though they have exactly the same fields. This becomes extremely tiresome in the scope of a tree, where there are linking outputs to inputs is widespread. It makes it impossible to chain standalone leaves together, as they are inherently dependent on each other's input and output formats.

ros_trees handles this pain "automagically" through the method ros_trees.data_management.auto_generate(). This function tries as hard as possible to generate an instance of the desired object class from data (don't ask...). While this saves you from writing endless arbitrary linking code, it is also improves the quality of your leaves. Using this method makes leaves work with as many different types of input as possible, rather than requiring manual conversion code with every use case.

Basic Examples

Leaves can be written as an instance or class, with class being generally preferred. Below are some basic examples of how to write your own leaves ():

• A Leaf which accepts no input data, and saves the result (output of leaf.result_fn()) so the next leaf can access it via data_management.get_last_value():

  data_generator_leaf = Leaf("Data Generator", load=False, save=True)
  

• A Leaf which swaps success results for failures and vice versa (note: usually you would use py_trees.decorators for this):

  inverted_leaf = Leaf(
      "Inverted", eval_fn=lambda leaf, value: not leaf._default_eval_fn(value))
  

• A SubscriberLeaf whose data on '/camera/image_raw' is not yet ready for use (we don't yet have the camera), so instead it will instantly return failure via debug mode:

  camera_leaf = SubscriberLeaf("Camera",
                               topic_name='/camera/image_raw',
                               topic_class=sensor_msgs.Image,
                               debug=debugging.DebugMode.INSTANT_FAILURE)
  

• An ActionLeaf calling a '/move_to_location' ROS Action Server to move an arm 'home', and saves True as the result indicating it always succeeds:

  move_home_leaf = ActionLeaf("Move home",
                              action_namespace='/move_to_location',
                              load_value='home',
                              save=True,
                              save_value=True)
  

• A ServiceLeaf calling a '/detect_objects' ROS Service by taking in an RGB image saved in key 'rgb_image', and returning the first object in the list of returned objects:

  def first_object(leaf):
      return leaf._default_result_fn[0]
  
  
  first_object_leaf = ServiceLeaf("Get first object",
                                  service_name='/detect_objects',
                                  load_key='rgb_image',
                                  result_fn=first_object)
  

• The previous example, but using a Lambda instead:

  first_object_leaf = ServiceLeaf(
    "Get first object",
    service_name='/detect_objects',
    load_key='rgb_image',
    result_fn=lambda leaf: leaf._default_result_fn[0])
  

Accessing Common Leaves

General, non-robot-specific leaves that we create are provided through the ros_trees.leaves_common submodule. Importing this provides you with a library of common leaves including:

• General leaves provided by py_trees (note: leaves are called "behaviours" in their vocabulary)
• Leaves for using the terminal to receive and send text
• Leaves for transforming and translating poses
• Leaves for using Queue data structures in behaviour trees

Writing Good Leaves

A good leaf is a leaf that is as general purpose as physically possible given what it does. It may be impossible to write a leaf that can perform object detection without an input image, but your leaf should be written to work with any type of input that contains an image. To achieve this, the following are some good guidelines to stick by:

• Implement your leaves by extending an existing class (e.g. classdef MyLeaf(ros_trees.leaves.Leaf): ...)
• The less code in your leaf implementation, generally the better. Don't be afraid of having a leaf class that is literally just setting a default parameter (that's what most ActionLeaf and ServiceLeaf implementations end up being).
• Lean on default behaviours and function implementations as much as possible; they are there to make writing good leaves as easy as possible
• Prefer extending methods over a complete override (i.e. if method m() is replacing BaseClass.m() in the base leaf class, your implementation of m() should aim to call BaseClass.m() either directly or by super(MyClass, self).m()).
• Making changes to leaves here (in particularly Leaf) affects every leaf ever written by anyone... that should be weighed up when considering whether it is easier to just implement what you want in your own leaf.

The Anatomy of a Leaf

The above figure shows the leaf's lifecycle, from the start to end of execution by the behaviour tree. Details for each of the parts in the image above are provided below:

1. pre: other leaves have run before this leaf and stored data in the py_trees blackboard (a centralised key-value dictionary). There is also the special method get_last_value() from ros_trees.data_management that will "magically" get the last saved result from a previous leaf.
2. load data: the leaf attempts to load any data it needs by calling load_fn. If the load_fn argument is not provided, there is a default behaviour that should work for most cases. The default load_fn (see Leaf._default_load_fn()) will load from the blackboard key load_key if provided, otherwise it uses the last saved value through get_last_value().
3. loaded: the result of load_fn can be assumed to be available in the self.loaded_data member from this point forward.
4. ticking: happens when a leaf doesn't complete immediately. Override is_leaf_done() to control how the leaf decides its action is done, and override _extra_update() to start your long running behaviour. It must not be blocking!
5. attain a result: the result of the action is created by calling result_fn. Short running actions can simply create their result from scratch in this function.
6. finished: the leaf has finished its action, and it can be assumed that the result is available in self.result.
7. saving the result: if the save flag is set, the leaf will attempt to save self.result (or save_value) according to save_fn. The default save_fn should be fine for most cases; it saves the result to key save_key if it is set, otherwise the result is saved such that it is available to the next leaf in the tree with get_last_value().
8. leaving: the leaf is done; no more actions should be performed by the leaf from this point on.
9. evaluate the result: eval_fn is called to determine whether the leaf's process was a success or failure. The function is provided with save_value if set, otherwise self.result. If no eval_fn is provided, the default will return the first bool if the data provided is a list, otherwise the Boolean evaluation of the data.
10. post: the tree has decided the leaf is done; any steps your leaf needs to perform to stop its action should be done in an overload of _extra_terminate(). For example, an ActionLeaf sends the pre-empt signal by overloading extra_terminate().

That's a general overview of the leaf lifecycle in ros_trees. We have covered what you will need to know about leaves for 99% of cases, but there are also other methods you can override to control other parts of the process. See the class implementation ros_trees.leaves.Leaf for full details.

Leaf Parameterisation Documentation

Here we describe each of the input arguments to the leaf classes. Note that all classes have the Leaf class arguments as they extend from it. If you need any more details, feel free to dig into the class implementations.

Leaf class

A barebones Leaf every other leaf is built upon. The constructor has the following customisation parameters:

• name: the name of the leaf (required). The name does not have to be unique throughout the tree. It is safest to stick to numbers and letters here due to py_trees handling other characters poorly in some of its visualisation methods.
• load: whether the leaf should attempt to load data (default = True).
• load_value: static data to be loaded by the leaf (default = None). If this exists it takes precedence over all other load methods (load_key and loading from last result via data_management.get_last_value()), so load_fn should return this value.
• load_key: a key to load data from the py_trees.Blackboard (default = None). If this exists, and load_value is not set, load_fn should return what is stored at this key.
• load_fn: a function handle of the form fn(leaf), returning the loaded data (default = None). It is used instead of Leaf._default_load_fn if provided. The default method loads the first available from: load_value, load_key, data_management.get_last_value(). Your implementation ideally should still call Leaf._default_load_fn, and respect the priority order outlined.
• result_fn: a function handle of the form fn(leaf), returning the result of the Leaf's action (default = None). It is used instead of Leaf._default_result_fn if provided. The default simply returns leaf.loaded_data.
• save: whether the leaf should save the result (default = False).
• save_value: static data to be saved instead of the leaf result (default = None). If this is set save_fn is called with a value of save_value instead of leaf.result.
• save_key: a key to load data from the py_trees.Blackboard (default = None). If this is present it takes precedence over saving to last result via data_management.set_last_value(), so save_fn should save to this key.
• save_fn: a function handle of the form fn(leaf, value), which saves value to the configured location. It is used instead of Leaf._default_save_fn if provided. The default method saves value at key save_key if save_key is set, otherwise it stores the value with data_management.set_last_value(). Your implementation should respect this priority order.
• eval_fn: a function handle of the form fn(leaf, value), returning a bool denoting if value is a success (default = None). It is used instead of Leaf._default_eval_fn if provided. The default returns the first bool value if value is a list, otherwise it returns bool(value). value will either be leaf.result or save_value depending on if save_value is set.
• debug: sets debugging mode to one of the values from debugging.DebugMode (default = debugging.DebugMode.OFF). Other options are: INSTANT_SUCCESS, INPUT_FOR_SUCCESS, INSTANT_FAILURE, and INPUT_FOR_FAILURE. See debugging.DebugMode for further details.

ActionLeaf class

An ActionLeaf creates an actionlib.SimpleActionClient for interfacing with an existing ROS Action Server. It extends the base Leaf class, making the following changes:

• _default_eval_fn(): uses the action client state and Leaf._default_eval_fn to evaluate if the Leaf succeeded
• _default_load_fn(): uses the "automagic" of data_management.auto_generate() to try generate a goal for the Action Server from Leaf._default_load_fn()
• _default_result_fn(): returns the result received by the action client
• _extra_setup: sets up the actionlib.SimpleActionClient and attempts contact with the ActionServer
• _extra_terminate(): handles pre-empt requests and all other manners of random failure, gracefully cancelling the goal
• _extra_update(): sends the goal if not already sent
• _is_leaf_done(): returns False until the action client has a result

The ActionLeaf constructor defines one extra parameter:

• action_namespace: the namespace of the ROS Action Server the leaf will interact with (required)

PublisherLeaf class

A PublisherLeaf publishes a message to a topic each time a leaf is called by the tree. It makes the following extensions to the base Leaf class:

• _default_load_fn(): uses the "automagic" of data_management.auto_generate() to try generate a message of topic_class from Leaf._default_load_fn()
• _default_result_fn(): does the publishing (as this is a short blocking call), throwing an exception if publishing fails
• _extra_setup(): sets up the ROS Publisher and dirtily waits until ROS accepts the publisher (ROS for whatever reason will let you use a publisher before it has finished initialising and you just lose the message...)

The PublisherLeaf class defines two extra parameters:

• topic_name: the name of the topic that the leaf will publish to (required)
• topic_class: the type of message that the leaf will publish (required)

ServiceLeaf class

A ServiceLeaf calls a service and returns the response. It makes the following extensions to the base Leaf class:

• _default_load_fn(): uses the "automagic" of data_management.auto_generate() to try generate a service request for the ROS service from Leaf._deafult_load_fn()
• _default_result_fn(): makes the service call (as this is a short blocking call), throwing an exception if the call fails
• _extra_setup(): checks the service exists and sets up the rospy.ServiceProxy for calling it

The ServiceLeaf class defines one extra parameter:

• service_name: the name of the ROS Service the leaf will interact with (required)

SubscriberLeaf class

A SubscriberLeaf attempts to get a message on a topic, with configurable timeout parameters. It makes the following extensions to the base Leaf class:

• _default_result_fn(): blocks until the expiry time is complete or the Leaf receives a message on the configured topic (note: short times should be used as this is blocking currently...)
• _extra_setup(): sets up the ROS Subscriber

The SubscriberLeaf class defines four extra parameters:

• topic_name: the name of the topic that the leaf will subscribe to (required)
• topic_class: the type of message that leaf will expect to receive (required)
• once_only: only new messages are returned from this leaf (no message will be returned twice)
• expiry_time: the time after which a message is deemed to have expired and is deemed to old to be returned by the leaf (default = None). No value means all messages will be considered.
• timeout: the max time the leaf will wait before declaring nothing was received (default=3.0)