PR2 technical documents

[Bill Smart]

Fellow PR2 Owners,

Some potentially good news about opening the technical documentation for the PR2.  I reached out to Sanford Dickert, whom I worked with a Willow Garage a decade ago, and he reached out to Scott Hassan about opening the docs.  Scott is willing to release the documents to the community!

However, there's apparently a lot of information in the archive that Scott has, some of which is private.  Rather than search for and remove the private information, we've been asked to enumerate the documents and code that we're interested in having opened up.  I've copied Sanford in on this email, so he can aslo weigh in if I'm misrepresenting anything.

So, what do we want to have?  Being specific will be useful, since "everything" isn't a useful list :-)  Weigh in here with what you think we need, I'll compile it into a list, and we can take it from there.

cheers

-- Bill

[Shingo Kitagawa]

Hi, Bill

What we really want to know is about the electrical parts, mainly schematics, firmware and slip rings.

If there are schematics of motor controller board (MCB), gripper MCB, ethercat hub, power board,

we can make them by ourselves.

We also want to get the firmware data of the MCB and gripper MCB.

We have spare MCBs, but the firmware will disappear because they are stored in the boxes and not connected to robots,

Also, the slip rings are also damaged, so we want to know the product serial of the slip rings, too.

We opened our PR2, and we got some slip ring information by ourselves, but we want to know the official information.

--

Shingo Kitagawa

the University of Tokyo, JSK Lab

s-kit...@jsk.imi.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp

2023年1月23日(月) 8:17 Bill Smart <sma...@oregonstate.edu>:

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[Sanford Dickert]

Hey all - 

Good to meet the crowd here and very happy to help.

Couple of points:

OLD PR2 PARTS

Scott has FIVE PR2 carcasses in a storage location in California (I think) and is happy to contribute it to the community.

Bill informed me that Clearpath also is giving parts - and would be thrilled to send these systems to the depot or wherever

the Clearpath parts are so others can access.  Any insight?

TECHNICAL DOCUMENTS

So Scott has all of the files from Google Docs and from local servers from the Garage on a single drive BUT the files are 

intermixed with private and sensitive HR data.  In order for him to find what you are specifically looking for (or the cache

of files that would help the community) he needs some "search terms" (yeah, I know!) to find what you are searching for.

One of the challenges is likely that when Willow ended, no one wrapped things up and did any handoff documents on the 

way to closing the door.  Thus various team members might know where things are.  If anyone knows Eric or Keynan and 

can ask them to contact me, I can help find what they did/know.

As for the only thing I have heard people are asking about - the motor controller - I have reached out to the hardware 

engineer who designed it and he knows the EE/CS person who coded it.  Lets see if they have any material in their 

possession.

If you wish to reach me in the US - I am 650 5DELUXE.  My Whatsapp/telegram is sdickert and happy to connect if you 

need to reach me in other channels.

Happy to extend the life of these machines - and Scott would love it  if he could get one of the other five PR2s working 

for his own adventures.  If you are interested in helping on that task, send me a private note.

Sincerely,

Sanford

P.S. Here are the photos I have of the PR2s over the years (https://photos.app.goo.gl/vhDbDyBjitiKaqXDA) including:

​

Sanford Dickert
www.whoissanford.com

Social Footprint:  LinkedIn  Facebook  Twitter 

Make an appointment: https://calendly.com/whoissanford

[Shingo Kitagawa]

Hi,

Thank you for your offer.

Scott has FIVE PR2 carcasses in a storage location in California (I think) and is happy to contribute it to the community.
Bill informed me that Clearpath also is giving parts - and would be thrilled to send these systems to the depot or wherever

This is a wonderful offer.

We really want to have more PR2s (probably), and we will have a discussion about it in our lab!

the Clearpath parts are so others can access.  Any insight?

Yes, that's right, and our lab manages the parts now.

We manage these parts in our lab.

• Mechanical parts:
• Finger tip: 53
• FInger?: 3
• Gripper: 5
• Wrist: 1
• Forearm: 1
• Upper arm: 1
• Caster:5
• Head: 1
• Battery unit: 3
• RUN STOP: 3
• Electrics:
• Motor controller board (MCB): 60
• Gripper MCB: 3
• Ethercat Hub: 1
• Power board circuit for computer: 6
• Computers:
• Head computer?: 2
• Quadro GPU: 1

As for the only thing I have heard people are asking about - the motor controller - I have reached out to the hardware 
engineer who designed it and he knows the EE/CS person who coded it.  Lets see if they have any material in their 
possession.

 Great! The schematics and firmwares of the boards are what the PR2 community has been looking for a long time!

--

Shingo Kitagawa

the University of Tokyo, JSK Lab

s-kit...@jsk.imi.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp

2023年1月23日(月) 22:46 Sanford Dickert <sdic...@gmail.com>:

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[Sanford Dickert]

Hey all - 

RE: TECH DOCUMENTS

I'm in the middle of working with Scott to find these items.  

The motor controller engineer has not found anything yet, but I am working on getting somewhere with him.

Again, does anyone have specific "key words" that we can search the files?  There are over 30G of data and there are potential private materials there.

If we have some specific terms that we can search for, we can see what we find.

RE: PARTS
I have forwarded the details of both Dr. Kitagawa and Dr. Okada to Scott.

Also, if they were just parts, are you asking for them to be shipped to Toyko?

Sanford

[Michael 'v4hn' Görner]

Hi there,

Sorry to start off this mail somewhat bipolar, but I'm really happy
about the progress and your offer and also quite sad. After Ryan's
public announcement at roscon
(https://vimeo.com/showcase/9954564/video/767164651 from 10:42)
these mails sound like a lot of backpedaling from the "hardware design
archive". Don't get me wrong, we'll take whatever we get and we will
be greatful (I'm the one who asked him multiple times to "just dump the
files" for us), but going from "Hardware Design Archive - We still
organize files" to "What do you need? We can't tell you what we got
because every second file is HR data and it's too much to enumerate" is
quite a leap.
From the announcements and me talking to Ryan it sounded like
you are willing to share basically everything that might be required to
build the robot again from scratch (of course not by instruction, but
by "all information needed is in there somewhere"). Not that anyone
would want to do that anymore, but that's pretty much what "open
hardware" means.

Shingo already mentioned the most important points, but here's our list:

I would hope for
- cable drawings
- manufacturing files
- cad models (especially including the mounting plates' exact locations)
- "the schematics themselves", esp. the electronics
(All of these were explicitly mentioned by Ryan)
- product serials for all individual components (the spare part lists
Clearpath sent around multiple times in the past can be an entrance
point)
- firmware, especially for the different MCBs.

Concerning the spare parts (assuming there are no full spare robots,
I'm unsure how you define 'carcasses'), I do think it makes sense
to send them to the JSK lab if they can spare the space and are willing
to handle shipment to other places.
If we are actually talking full robots that might even be made to start
up again with spare batteries and new servers, or might serve as
part-storage, I would propose to scatter them between different labs
across the globe instead so the full research community can make use of
them. In this case our lab in Hamburg, Germany would be interested in
and could handle one as well.

> Happy to extend the life of these machines - and Scott would love it
> if he could get one of the other five PR2s working for his own
> adventures. If you are interested in helping on that task, send me a
> private note.

That very much depends on the current state of the physical platform and
the expected result of "get it working". Many seemingly basic parts of
the PR2 ROS packages haven't been in a fully-usable state since at
least ROS fuerte (yes, I know...) and I'm still curious about how some
things could *ever* have worked as described by some Willow Garage
documentation.


Greetings from Germany,


Michael Görner

On Tue, 24 Jan 2023 13:41:02 -0800 (PST)
Sanford Dickert <sdic...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey all -
>
> *RE: TECH DOCUMENTS*

> I'm in the middle of working with Scott to find these items.
>
> The motor controller engineer has not found anything yet, but I am
> working on getting somewhere with him.
>
> Again, does anyone have specific "key words" that we can search the
> files? There are over 30G of data and there are potential private
> materials there. If we have some specific terms that we can search
> for, we can see what we find.
>
>

> *RE: PARTS*I have forwarded the details of both Dr. Kitagawa and Dr.

> Okada to Scott.
> Also, if they were just parts, are you asking for them to be shipped
> to Toyko?
>
> Sanford
>
> On Monday, January 23, 2023 at 9:08:32 AM UTC-5
> s-kit...@jsk.imi.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > Thank you for your offer.
> >
> > Scott has FIVE PR2 carcasses in a storage location in California (I
> > think)
> >> and is happy to contribute it to the community.
> >> Bill informed me that Clearpath also is giving parts - and would
> >> be thrilled to send these systems to the depot or wherever
> >
> > This is a wonderful offer.
> > We really want to have more PR2s (probably), and we will have a
> > discussion about it in our lab!
> >
> > the Clearpath parts are so others can access. Any insight?
> >
> > Yes, that's right, and our lab manages the parts now.
> > We manage these parts in our lab.
> >

> > - Mechanical parts:
> > - Finger tip: 53
> > - FInger?: 3
> > - Gripper: 5
> > - Wrist: 1
> > - Forearm: 1
> > - Upper arm: 1
> > - Caster:5
> > - Head: 1
> > - Battery unit: 3
> > - RUN STOP: 3
> > - Electrics:
> > - Motor controller board (MCB): 60
> > - Gripper MCB: 3
> > - Ethercat Hub: 1
> > - Power board circuit for computer: 6
> > - Computers:
> > - Head computer?: 2
> > - Quadro GPU: 1

> >
> > As for the only thing I have heard people are asking about - the
> > motor
> >> controller - I have reached out to the hardware
> >> engineer who designed it and he knows the EE/CS person who coded
> >> it. Lets see if they have any material in their
> >> possession.
> >
> > Great! The schematics and firmwares of the boards are what the PR2
> > community has been looking for a long time!
> >
> > --
> > Shingo Kitagawa
> > the University of Tokyo, JSK Lab
> > s-kit...@jsk.imi.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp
> >
> >
> > 2023年1月23日(月) 22:46 Sanford Dickert <sdic...@gmail.com>:
> >
> >> Hey all -
> >>
> >> Good to meet the crowd here and very happy to help.
> >>
> >> Couple of points:
> >>

> >> *OLD PR2 PARTS*

> >> Scott has FIVE PR2 carcasses in a storage location in California
> >> (I think) and is happy to contribute it to the community.
> >> Bill informed me that Clearpath also is giving parts - and would
> >> be thrilled to send these systems to the depot or wherever
> >> the Clearpath parts are so others can access. Any insight?
> >>

> >> *TECHNICAL DOCUMENTS*

> >> On Sun, Jan 22, 2023 at 11:17 PM Bill Smart
> >> <sma...@oregonstate.edu> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Fellow PR2 Owners,
> >>>
> >>> Some potentially good news about opening the technical
> >>> documentation for the PR2. I reached out to Sanford Dickert,
> >>> whom I worked with a Willow Garage a decade ago, and he reached
> >>> out to Scott Hassan about opening the docs. Scott is willing to
> >>> release the documents to the community!
> >>>
> >>> However, there's apparently a lot of information in the archive
> >>> that Scott has, some of which is private. Rather than search for
> >>> and remove the private information, we've been asked to enumerate
> >>> the documents and code that we're interested in having opened up.
> >>> I've copied Sanford in on this email, so he can aslo weigh in if
> >>> I'm misrepresenting anything.
> >>>
> >>> So, what do we want to have? Being specific will be useful,
> >>> since "everything" isn't a useful list :-) Weigh in here with
> >>> what you think we need, I'll compile it into a list, and we can
> >>> take it from there.
> >>>
> >>> cheers
> >>>
> >>> -- Bill
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >> Sanford Dickert
> >> www.whoissanford.com
> >>

> >> Social Footprint: LinkedIn <https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanford>
> >> Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/sanford> Twitter
> >> <https://www.twitter.com/sanford>

> >> Make an appointment: https://calendly.com/whoissanford
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> >> Groups "PR2_Users" group.
> >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
> >> send an email to pr2_users+...@googlegroups.com.
> >>
> > To view this discussion on the web visit
> >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pr2_users/v1-KTjDShG3OTfYmZWeI-d9def9a9dcd017031c47c81a01451ef4%40gmail.com

> >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pr2_users/v1-KTjDShG3OTfYmZWeI-d9def9a9dcd017031c47c81a01451ef4%40gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
> >> .
> >>
> >
>



--
Michael 'v4hn' Görner, M.Sc. Cognitive Science, Research Associate
Universität Hamburg
Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences
Department of Informatics
Group Technical Aspects of Multimodal Systems

Vogt-Kölln-Straße 30
D-22527 Hamburg

Room: F-315
Phone: +49 40 42883-2432
Website: https://tams.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/people/goerner/

[Sanford Dickert]

Michael - 

I will forward your request.  To be clear, this is coming from Scott Hassan who has the hard drives from when Willow closed.

Since then, I have little to no knowledge of anything Ryan (or anyone else) is talking about.

To be clear, this was just a friend (Bill) asking a friend (me) asking a friend (Scott) if there is something he can provide.

That said, none of these files are clearly structured - but if someone wants, we can go on Zoom and try searching together.  

I need to respect Scott's desire to keep the personal data safe and get you what you want at minimum hassle.

As for the parts, I am going to follow up to find out what Scott actually has and see what we can do.  The goal here is to

simply help out and do what we can without making much stress on Scott - he is doing other things, and this was a 

complete surprise he offered.

So lets see what we can do.  @Bill Smart any thing you can do to suggest how we make this happen?  I am going back to London

on the 31st, so we could do a Zoom at any time that works best for you.

Sanford

Sanford Dickert
www.whoissanford.com

Social Footprint:  LinkedIn  Facebook  Twitter 

[Michael 'v4hn' Görner]

Hi again Sanford,

Thanks for the polite reply to my somewhat harsh mail. :)
As I wrote, we are definitely grateful for any documents we can get our
hands on. I was under the impression that these mails were coordinated
with Clearpath and the 2-minute ROSCon announcement I linked in my last
mail.
If that isn't the case, does that mean Clearpath has copies of all
these files (probably except the HR stuff) as well? Ryan Gariepy
definitely sounded like they have "all files" in their backups and
might organize them soonish.

The difficult part about your offer is that it is often very unclear
what exactly we need until the moment something breaks and we isolate
the issue. Together with the fact that most if not all current
PR2 users/maintainers (to the best of my knowledge) are not related to
Willow Garage directly, this leaves us somewhat in the dark.

I'm happy to join a potential Zoom call and would propose to coordinate
at least with Shingo as they have a stronger background on the PR2
electronics. I would be surprised if nobody else wants to join in, but
this mailing list has been very quiet for ages. I'll send a
notification around to a list of people I got from Clearpath before
support ended and see if anyone still responds there.

Best,


Michael Görner

On Tue, 24 Jan 2023 23:28:31 +0000
Sanford Dickert <sdic...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael -
> I will forward your request.  To be clear, this is coming from Scott

> Hassan who has the hard drives from when Willow closed.Since then, I

> have little to no knowledge of anything Ryan (or anyone else) is
> talking about. To be clear, this was just a friend (Bill) asking a
> friend (me) asking a friend (Scott) if there is something he can
> provide. That said, none of these files are clearly structured - but

> if someone wants, we can go on Zoom and try searching together.I need

> to respect Scott's desire to keep the personal data safe and get you
> what you want at minimum hassle. As for the parts, I am going to
> follow up to find out what Scott actually has and see what we can do.

> The goal here is tosimply help out and do what we can without making

> much stress on Scott - he is doing other things, and this was a
> complete surprise he offered. So lets see what we can do.@Bill

> Smartany thing you can do to suggest how we make this happen?  I am
> going back to Londonon the 31st, so we could do a Zoom at any time

> that works best for you. Sanford
>
>
>
>
>
>

[Shingo Kitagawa]

Hi,

I also want to join the online meeting!

We are willing to store the spare parts and spread them again to PR2 community when necessary.

The motor controller boards names are WG005, WG006 and other boards names are WG014 and WH021.

http://wiki.ros.org/ethercat_hardware

I hope this information may helps you.

I will also search the firmware file name.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pr2_users/20230125102101.66382693%40samsa.

--

--

北川 晋吾

[Matthieu Herrb]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2023 at 11:27:46PM +0100, Michael 'v4hn' Görner wrote:
>
> Shingo already mentioned the most important points, but here's our list:
>
> I would hope for
> - cable drawings
> - manufacturing files
> - cad models (especially including the mounting plates' exact locations)
> - "the schematics themselves", esp. the electronics
> (All of these were explicitly mentioned by Ryan)
> - product serials for all individual components (the spare part lists
> Clearpath sent around multiple times in the past can be an entrance
> point)
> - firmware, especially for the different MCBs.
>

Hi,

Here at LAAS/CNRS in Toulouse we have 2 PR2 robots still working.
I agree with the list of Shingo and Michael that would be helpful to
allow us to keep them running as long as possible.

We have a few spare MCB that we purchased from Clearpath when they
stopped the maintainance, but we didn't yet had to try to reprogram
one to replace an existing MCB.

Also schematics for the custom ethercat switch would be interesting as
we had to replace 2 of them (with Clearpath) since we have the
robots.

Thanks for the efforts and best regards,
--
Matthieu Herrb

[Bill Smart]

Michael,

Sanford beat me to the reply.  This is a parallel effort to the one with Clearpath, and not coordinated with them in any way.  Sanford and I were chatting about something else, I remembered the thread from a few months ago about Clearpath releasing the docs, and I said "Sanford, do you think Scott would open everything up?".  I've copied Ryan in on this email, to bring him into the loop (Ryan; happy to give additional context if you like).

The enumeration is hard but my understanding is that there's a lot of material mixed together, since it wasn't curated at the time Willow Garage wound down.  I think that, if we miss something, we can always go back and ask later but, since Scott's essentially doing us a favor, I think that the number of times we go back should be as limited as possible.

cheers

-- Bill

On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 1:21 AM Michael 'v4hn' Görner <goe...@informatik.uni-hamburg.de> wrote:

[This email originated from outside of OSU. Use caution with links and attachments.]

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pr2_users/20230125102101.66382693%40samsa.

[Michael 'v4hn' Görner]

Hey Matthieu,

we've never talked face to face, but I was about to call you on the
phone just now to see whether you still use your PR2s.
Glad to hear you are. :-)

Concerning the switch, I'm not aware of it being special in any way?
At least I've been told by someone in the past that this is a regular
unmanaged switch. Do you have more insights? Did you ever try a
different one? What were the error symptoms you saw to get them
replaced?

Greetings from Hamburg,


Michael

On Wed, 25 Jan 2023 11:22:32 +0100
Matthieu Herrb <matthie...@laas.fr> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Here at LAAS/CNRS in Toulouse we have 2 PR2 robots still working.
> I agree with the list of Shingo and Michael that would be helpful to
> allow us to keep them running as long as possible.
>
> We have a few spare MCB that we purchased from Clearpath when they
> stopped the maintainance, but we didn't yet had to try to reprogram
> one to replace an existing MCB.
>
> Also schematics for the custom ethercat switch would be interesting as
> we had to replace 2 of them (with Clearpath) since we have the
> robots.
>
> Thanks for the efforts and best regards,



--

[Gustavo Goretkin]

Please add my name to the list of those interested in getting more information about the PR2 hardware!

There are two switch/hub devices. The ethercat hub is bespoke: https://github.com/PR2/pr2_ethercat_drivers/blob/d93eb53a/ethercat_hardware/ethercat_device_plugin.xml#L19

and appears to be based on the ET1100 device, as an additional keyword: 

https://github.com/PR2/pr2_ethercat_drivers/blob/d93eb5/ethercat_hardware/src/wg014.cpp

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[Matthieu Herrb]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 11:36:24AM +0100, Michael 'v4hn' Görner wrote:
> Hey Matthieu,
>
> we've never talked face to face, but I was about to call you on the
> phone just now to see whether you still use your PR2s.
> Glad to hear you are. :-)
>
> Concerning the switch, I'm not aware of it being special in any way?
> At least I've been told by someone in the past that this is a regular
> unmanaged switch. Do you have more insights? Did you ever try a
> different one? What were the error symptoms you saw to get them
> replaced?

Hi,

it's the one in the back which is a willlow-garage serigraphied board.

WG014 B (68-0501 4)
6-Port EtherCAT Hub

(see the attached pichure, I'm not sure anymore if this one is in
working condition or not)

Iirc when the first one died I tried using a regular ethernet switch
to replace it, but got no luck.


--
Matthieu Herrb

[Ryan Gariepy]

We have what we believe to be all the material, courtesy of when we had the full Willow Garage PR2 test infrastructure set up on site...there was a lot of data that came with that, including physical servers.

Back when we started looking at this in ~2019 and again off and on since until we got Scott's clearance in late '22, the schematics themselves were the largest issue and were mixed in with the WG wiki dump we also have. PCB layouts, mech files, and assembly docs were straightforward though a lot of work to run through given the part count. 

Martin, any updates you can provide?

[Martin Cote]

Hi Everyone,

 

I apologize for the silence so far on this thread, it all moved so quickly.

 

As Ryan mentioned, we are in the midst of looking to release all the files that we could pull from what was given to us from Willow Garage. I can confirm we have cable harness drawings, PCB manufacturing files, mechanical drawings, CAD models, electrical schematics, and sourcing for several off the shelf parts. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with a PR2, so it’s hard to say for sure this is a compressive set of files that includes all the parts, but it’s certainly a lot, which is part of the reason it’s taken awhile to host them.

 

Though I can say we’re actively working on the hosting them publicly, and hope to have them ready to share within the next 1-2 months. We’ll be sure to let everyone here know when they are available.

 

Best Regards,

Martin

 

 

Martin Cote| Manufacturing Manager

800 301 3863 x 858 

97 Randall Dr Waterloo, ON, N2V 1C5 , Canada

mc...@clearpathrobotics.com | www.clearpathrobotics.com

[Shingo Kitagawa]

Hi Sanford,

Thank you for offering old PR2s to pr2 community.

Do you have any updates about five old PR2s?

I think it is better to start discussion in another mail thread, and have a zoom meeting with people who want old PR2s.

--

Shingo Kitagawa

the University of Tokyo, JSK Lab

s-kit...@jsk.imi.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp

2023年1月25日(水) 8:28 Sanford Dickert <sdic...@gmail.com>:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pr2_users/v1-ABy1PbQ4tD1p2zzPB-c51f54dec147140cf4fd8d943ec28244%40gmail.com.

[Sanford Dickert]

Yes - please set it up on a different thread since I met up with Ryan at ERF and he informed me of the release.

Sanford

Sanford Dickert
sdic...@gmail.com

[Shingo Kitagawa]

Hi, Sanford,

I make a new mail thread, and gather people who are instersted in this topic.