11.5. Walkthrough: UR10 Bin Stacking

This tutorial walks through a complete bin stacking application using the UR10 robot. In this example, we use a pre-designed USD environment containing a conveyor belt, a pallet where the bins should be stacked, and a UR10 robot with a suction gripper. Our application doesn’t add to the scene (aside from invisible collision obstacles), and instead controls the existing USD elements in the pre-designed USD environment.

In all command line examples, we use the abbreviation isaac_python for the Isaac Sim python script (<isaac_sim_root>/python.sh on Linux and <isaac_sim_root>\python.bat on Windows). The command lines are written relative to the working directory standalone_examples/api/omni.isaac.cortex.

Run the following demo

isaac_python demo_ur10_conveyor_main.py

Press play once Isaac Sim has started up. You’ll see the bin stacking demo running.

This tutorial will step through the demo.

The setting is a UR10 robot with a suction gripper moving bins from a conveyor to a pallet. Bins need to be stacked upside down, so any bin that that comes right-side up is flipped at a flip station before stacking.

This demo uses a shallow decider network with a top-level dispatch node choosing among multiple sequential state machines.

The individual behaviors demonstrate a common RMPflow programming technique where obstacle regions are automatically toggled on and off strategically to shape the motion behavior. These obstacle regions are modeled in the scene USD but are invisible by default. Try toggling their visibility. Go to World/Ur10Table/Obstacles and toggle the visibility of the FlipStationSphere, NavigationDome, NavigationBarrier, and NavigationFlipStation to see them.

The bin placement behavior also leverages the reactivity of RMPflow in conjunction with its approach direction parameters to create an automatic adjustment behavior to correct on the fly for misalignment between bins.

11.5.1. Top-level dispatch

The entry point to the decider network is the Dispatch node as we can see in the construction. DfNetwork is the decider network structure; it’s passed the root (the Dispatch node) and the context object that will be available as a member within every decider/state node:

def make_decider_network(robot):
    return DfNetwork(Dispatch(), context=BinStackingContext(robot))

The context object gives each node access to the robot’s command API as well as any logical state extracted by its monitors. The Dispatch node’s decide() logic is pretty simple given the logical state.

class Dispatch(DfDecider):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()

        self.add_child("flip_bin", FlipBin())
        self.add_child("pick_bin", PickBin())
        self.add_child("place_bin", PlaceBin())
        self.add_child("go_home", make_go_home())
        self.add_child("do_nothing", DfStateMachineDecider(DoNothing()))

    def decide(self):
        if self.context.stack_complete:
            return DfDecision("go_home")

        if self.context.has_active_bin:
            if not self.context.active_bin.is_attached:
                return DfDecision("pick_bin")
            elif self.context.active_bin.needs_flip:
                return DfDecision("flip_bin")
            else:
                return DfDecision("place_bin")
        else:
            return DfDecision("go_home")

The logical state includes:

  • stack_complete: Notes whether all bins are on the pallet.

  • active_bin: The bin that’s currently in play. The bin remains active until it’s been placed on the stack. Then a new bin is selected from the bins at the end of the conveyor.

  • active_bin.is_attached: Indicates whether the active bin is attached to the end-effector via the suction gripper.

  • active_bin.needs_flip: Indicates whether the bin attached to the end-effector is right-side-up (needs flip) or up-side-down (doesn’t need flip).

The decision logic becomes simply: If the stack is complete or there’s no active bin, then go home. Otherwise, if there’s an active bin, pick the bin if it’s not already in the gripper, and flip it if it needs to be flipped. Then place the bin on the stack. Decider networks make it easy to write this decision logic in a readable form.

11.5.2. Sequential state machines

The sequential state machines that implement the pick, flip and place behaviors are each similar in structure.

class PickBin(DfStateMachineDecider):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__(
            DfStateSequence(
                [
                    ReachToPick(),
                    DfWaitState(wait_time=0.5),
                    DfSetLockState(set_locked_to=True, decider=self),
                    CloseSuctionGripper(),
                    DfTimedDeciderState(DfLift(0.3), activity_duration=0.4),
                    DfSetLockState(set_locked_to=False, decider=self),
                ],
            )
        )


class FlipBin(DfStateMachineDecider):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__(
            DfStateSequence(
                [
                    LiftAndTurn(),
                    MoveToFlipStation(),
                    DfSetLockState(set_locked_to=True, decider=self),
                    OpenSuctionGripper(),
                    ReleaseFlipStationBin(duration=0.65),
                    DfSetLockState(set_locked_to=False, decider=self),
                ]
            )
        )


class PlaceBin(DfStateMachineDecider):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__(
            DfStateSequence(
                [
                    ReachToPlace(),
                    DfWaitState(wait_time=0.5),
                    DfSetLockState(set_locked_to=True, decider=self),
                    OpenSuctionGripper(),
                    DfTimedDeciderState(DfLift(0.1), activity_duration=0.25),
                    DfWriteContextState(lambda ctx: ctx.mark_active_bin_as_complete()),
                    DfSetLockState(set_locked_to=False, decider=self),
                ],
            )
        )

One feature to note is the use of locking and unlocking the decider network. Decider networks are reactive by nature, so atomic state machine behaviors that shouldn’t be preempted need to be explicitly locked. The sequential state machines make use of DfSetLockState to lock and unlock the decider network. Additionally, PlaceBin uses DfWriteContextState to call a context function which marks the active bin as complete once it’s performed the placement procedure.

11.5.4. Robustness reactivity on placement

The bin attachment to the end-effector and the stacking alignment of the bins are both physically simulated. Just blindly grasping and moving the bin to a target without adjusting for errors will result in slightly misaligned bins which don’t rest against each other correctly. Since we’re using a reactive motion generator (RMPflow), implementing reactive adjustments is straightforward. In ReachToPlace the adjustments are made every cycle in the step() method:

class ReachToPlace(MoveWithNavObs):
    ...
    def step(self):
        if self.bin_under is not None:
            bin_under_p, _ = self.bin_under.bin_obj.get_world_pose()
            bin_grasped_p, _ = self.context.active_bin.bin_obj.get_world_pose()
            xy_err = bin_under_p[:2] - bin_grasped_p[:2]
            if np.linalg.norm(xy_err) < 0.02:
                self.target_p[:2] += 0.1 * (bin_under_p[:2] - bin_grasped_p[:2])

        target_pose = PosePq(self.target_p, math_util.matrix_to_quat(self.target_R))

        approach_params = ApproachParams(direction=0.15 * np.array([0.0, 0.0, -1.0]), std_dev=0.005)
        posture_config = self.context.robot.default_config
        self.update_command(
            MotionCommand(target_pose=target_pose, approach_params=approach_params, posture_config=posture_config)
        )

If we’re placing a bin on top of another bin (bin_under) this code adjusts the end-effector target based on the xy position alignment error between the bin in the gripper and the bin under it. (The orientational alignment generally is already sufficient for successful placement.)

Additionally, RMPflow is configured to take reactive state feedback from the simulator, and we use tight approach parameters for reaching the target (std_dev=0.005) so it needs to follow a narrow funnel on approach. If the bin is misaligned on first approach, the bin physics will shove the end-effector out of that funnel and it’ll attempt the approach again.

In combination, this gets the robot to reactively adjust the positioning of the bin and retry the approach (repeatedly if needed) until it gets it right. Often the adjustment process is sufficient, but periodically it needs to retry the approach. Usually a single retry suffices. This is a subtle behavior and the code is concise, but it’s the difference between approximately 85% successful bin placement and 100% success.

11.5.5. Logical state context

The BinStackingContext object additionally monitors all logical state needed to support the above behaviors. These monitors are set up in the constructor and the logical state is reset/initialized in the reset() method:

class BinStackingContext(ObstacleMonitorContext):
    def __init__(self, robot):
        super().__init__()
        ...

        self.add_monitors(
            [
                BinStackingContext.monitor_bins,
                BinStackingContext.monitor_active_bin,
                BinStackingContext.monitor_active_bin_grasp_T,
                BinStackingContext.monitor_active_bin_grasp_reached,
                self.diagnostics_monitor.monitor,
            ]
        )

        def reset(self):
            super().reset()

            # Find the collection of bins in the world scene.
            self.bins = []
            i = 0
            while True:
                name = "bin_{}".format(i)
                bin_obj = self.world.scene.get_object(name)
                if bin_obj is None:
                    break
                self.bins.append(BinState(bin_obj))
                i += 1

            self.active_bin = None
            self.stacked_bins.clear()

These monitors perform the following:

  1. Monitor bins: If there’s no active bin, it checks whether there’s a bin at the end of the conveyor and activates it if so.

  2. Monitor the active bin: Deactivates a bin if it’s dropped on the floor.

  3. Monitor the grasp transform of the active bin: Monitors the best grasp for the current active bin.

  4. Monitor whether the active bin is reached: Sets the active_bin.{is_grasp_reached,is_attached} flags based on the proximity between the end-effector and desired grasp transform, and whether the suction gripper is “closed”.

  5. Monitor diagnostics: Prints some information about the logical state at a readable (throttled) rate.