Running an Objective

This tutorial will demonstrate a "Hello World" of running Objectives using MoveIt Pro. An Objective is a high-level task that can be performed by the robot.

Creating, modifying, and executing Objectives is a core feature of MoveIt Pro. Objectives are composed of Behaviors, which are smaller tasks that the robot can execute and can be thought of as building blocks to create Objectives. To find out more about Behaviors, see Built-in Behaviors.

MoveIt Pro contains a wide variety of pre-made Objectives and Behaviors, so you can start commanding a robot right away.

This tutorial uses the "Pick AprilTag Labeled Object" Objective, which commands a robot arm to repeatedly pick up and place a small object in simulation. Note that in this simulation, no physics, cameras, or other sensors are being simulated, so no objects will actually move in the scene.

Launch MoveIt Pro

We assume you have already installed MoveIt Pro to the default install location. Launch the application using:

moveit_pro run -c lab_sim

When launching MoveIt Pro, the default screen is the Objective Run view. Click the "Build" button to swap to the Objective Builder view. This view shows all the built-in and compiled Objectives in the MoveIt Pro configuration folder.

1. Views

This section goes over the different sections of the Objectives Run and Objectives Build view. Navigate to the Objectives Run view by clicking the Run tab.

The Objectives Run view shows the current visualization of the robot, current Objective's Behavior Tree, the Quick Objectives hotbar, View Selection drop-down menu, and the Collapsible Objectives sidebar.

In the Visualization pane, the view of the scene can be adjusted by clicking in the pane and dragging the mouse around.

In the Behavior Tree pane, the current Objective is shown. While running an Objective, the Behavior Tree pane will highlight which Behavior(s) in the Objective the robot are currently executing.

The Quick Objectives hotbar has some Objectives that you can run quickly and is also customizable. To add/remove Objectives to the Quick Objective hotbar, click on the Collapsible Objectives sidebar button and star/unstar the Objectives you want on the Quick Objectives hotbar.

With the View Selection drop-down menu, you can customize how many panes you want to have at any given time. The panes can also be swapped with one another using the swap pane buttons between the panels.

2. Running the Objective

Now run the "Pick AprilTag Labeled Object" Objective. To run the Objective, first click the Collapsible Objectives sidebar button. This will bring up a sidebar with all of the compiled Objectives. Then click on the play button next to "Pick AprilTag Labeled Object". The robot will begin its pick and place routine.

An alternative way to run the "Pick AprilTag Labeled Object" Objective is to simply click the button on the Favorites hotbar. MoveIt Pro's Behavior Tree panel will highlight the current behavior being executed with a spinner.

For example, in the screenshot below, the robot is executing the "ExecuteMTCPlan" Behavior, which is part of the Move to Waypoint subtree.

3. Stopping a Motion

To safely stop the robot while executing the Objective, click the "Stop Motion" button on the top right. There will be a popup afterwards indicating that the Objective execution was halted. That can be safely dismissed.

Congratulations! You have successfully run the "Pick AprilTag Labeled Object" Objective!