🐍 Python bindings

Introduction

bipedal-locomotion-framework provides also python bindings. You can easily use them by importing bipedal-locomotion-framework in a python interpreter as follows

import bipedal_locomotion_framework.bindings as blf

Once you have import it you can check the content of the bindings using help(blf). We tried to implement a 1-to-1 mapping between the c++ structure and the python one, this means that every python submodule is associated to the equivalent c++ submodule. For instance blf.tsid represents the python bindings of BipedalLocomotion::TSID component.

The python bindings has been designed to be compliant to the PEP-8. This means that:

1. function and the variables are lowercase words separated by underscore (snake_case)
2. The class names starts with a capital letter (CammelCase)
3. The modules are lowercase words separated by underscore (snake_case)

To give an example, the following code shows how to retrieve a parameter from a toml configuration file in c++ and in python

#include <BipedalLocomotion/ParametersHandler/TomlImplementation.h>
#include <memory>
#include <string>
 
int main()
{
    namespace blf = ::BipedalLocomotion;
 
    const std::string parameterFile = "./config.toml";
    std::vector<int> param;
    auto paramHandler = std::make_shared<blf::ParametersHandler::TomlImplementation>();
    paramHandler->setFromFile(parameterFile);
    paramHandler->getParameter("vector", param);
    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

import bipedal_locomotion_framework.bindings as blf
 
 
parameter_file = './config.toml'
param_handler = blf.parameters_handler.TomlParametersHandler()
assert param_handler.set_from_file(parameter_file)
 
vector = param_handler.get_vector_of_int('vector')

# config.toml file
 
vector = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Some utilities

Create a custom TSID or IK task directly in Python

If you are a python user and you want create a inverse kinematics (IK) or a task based inverse dynamics (TSID) tasks, you do not need to write a C++ code. Indeed it is possible to write a class that inherits from TSIDLinearTask or IKLinearTask and pass it to tsid or ik solvers. The following snippet can be used as starting point to build a custom TSID task, a similar approach can be used to define a custom IK task

import bipedal_locomotion_framework.bindings as blf
 
 
class CustomTSIDTask(blf.tsid.TSIDLinearTask):
    """ CustomTSIDTask represents a custom task for the tsid solver.
 
    The class must define the following functions:
    __init__(self): the constructor
    size(self) -> Get the size of the task. (I.e the number of rows of the vector b)
    is_valid(self) -> Determines the validity of the objects retrieved with getA() and getB()
    type(self) -> Get the type of the task. Namely equality or inequality
 
    Furthemore you have to populate the following attrubutes defined in TSIDLinearTask:
    self._description:str -> contains the description of the task
    self._A:numpy.ndarray[float64[m, n]]) -> matrix that describes the task A * x = b
    self._b: numpy.ndarray[float64[m, 1]]) -> vector that describes the task A * x = b
 
    Depending on the content of the task you may need to reimplement the following methods
    initialize(self, param_handler: blf.parameters_handler.IParameterHandler) -> usefull function to set parameters to the task
    set_variables_handler(self, variables_handler: blf.system.VariablesHandler) -> usefull function to set the variables
    update(self) -> update the content of the task
    """
 
    def __init__(self):
 
        blf.tsid.TSIDLinearTask.__init__(self)  # Without this, a TypeError is raised.
 
        # set the description of the task
        self._description = "Custom task"
 
    def size(self):
        # this is the number of rows of the vector b (in this example is equal to 1)
        return 1
 
    def is_valid(self):
        return True
 
    def type(self):
        # the types are defined in blf.tsid.TSIDLinearTask.Type
        return blf.tsid.TSIDLinearTask.Type.equality

Then you can use your custom task as follows

import bipedal_locomotion_framework.bindings as blf
 
# Instantiate the task
custom_task = CustomTSIDTask()
 
# Initialize your task
custom_task.initialize(param_handler)
 
# Create the solver
solver = blf.tsid.QPTSID()
priority = 0
solver.add_task(custom_task, 'custom_task', priority)

Automatically build a TSID or IK from configuration file

If you are a python user you can easily create a inverse kinematics (IK) or a task based inverse dynamics (TSID) problem writing just a configuration file. The configuration file should contains the name of the tasks and the parameters of the associated tasks. This is possible thanks to two utilities function available only in python (create_ik and create_tsid)

For instance you can create a IK problem with

import bipedal_locomotion_framework.bindings as blf
import bipedal_locomotion_framework.utils as utils
 
# create a param handler
kindyn_handler = blf.parameters_handler.TomlParametersHandler()
assert kindyn_handler.set_from_file("parameter_file.toml")
ik_handler = blf.parameters_handler.TomlParametersHandler()
assert ik_handler.set_from_file("parameter_file_ik.toml")
 
kindyn_descriptor = blf.floating_base_estimators.construct_kindyncomputations_descriptor(kindyn_handler)
 
solver, tasks, variables_handler = utils.create_ik(kindyn=kindyn_descriptor, param_handler=ik_handler)

An example of the configuration file is

tasks = ["COM_TASK", "LF_TASK"]
 
[IK]
robot_velocity_variable_name = "robot_velocity"
 
[VARIABLES]
variables_name = ["robot_velocity"]
variables_size = [29]
 
[COM_TASK]
name = "com"
type = "CoMTask"
priority = 1
weight = [10.0, 10.0, 10.0]
 
# The following parameters are required by the specific task
robot_velocity_variable_name = "robot_velocity"
kp_linear = 10.0
 
[LF_TASK]
name = "left_foot"
type = "SE3Task"
priority = 0
 
# The following parameters are required by the specific task
robot_velocity_variable_name = "robot_velocity"
frame_name = "left_sole_link"
kp_linear = 10.0
kp_angular = 10.0

You can find further details calling

import bipedal_locomotion_framework.utils as utils
 
 
help(utils.create_tsid)
help(utils.create_ik)