XBot2_zmq & Pyxbot

This repo provides the tools to communicate with XBot without using ROS. This is done through two components:

• zmq_io: a XBot2 plugin which exposes a ZMQ-based robot API
• pyxbot: a python package providing a friendly python interface for zmq_io

The underlying communication happens over 3 different channels:

• The current robot state (Joint States and IMU) is streamed over a raw bytes connection
• Joint commands are received over a second raw bytes connection
• A third connection is dedicated to a reply/request channel where info is sent as YAML messages

Python interface

A python interface is available as a pip-installable package in the pyxbot subfolder. You can install it with:

uv pip install git+https://github.com/ADVRHumanoids/xbot2_zmq.git@crzz-dev#subdirectory=pyxbot

You can find more info in the README

How to load the XBot plugin

The XBot plugin name is zmq_io. After building and installing it you can load it in XBot by adding it to the config as follows.

zmq_io:
  type: zmq_io
  thread: nrt_main
  params:
    autostart: true
    protocol: tcp # either tcp or ipc
    tcp_state_port: 5559
    tcp_cmd_port: 5558
    tcp_service_port: 5557 
    ipc_state_port: /tmp/xbot2_zmq_pub.ipc
    ipc_cmd_port: /tmp/xbot2_zmq_cmd.ipc
    ipc_service_port: /tmp/xbot2_zmq_rep.ipc
    

Installation

The XBot plugin can be built with CMake. You can also use the standalone build script build_and_install_systemwide.sh to build and install, you can pass a path with --install-dir to specify the installation folder (e.g. a forest install directory).