The device never restores from a timeout and needs to be rebooted

[S-Dafarra]

It may happen that after a while that the module is running, we get a timeout error like

[ERROR]xsensmt: Sensor timeout, no sensor measurement received in the last 27.836755 seconds.

which continues until we reboot the module.

[traversaro]

I do not know if this can help, but can you try to test it with the update Xsens driver in #9 ? Thanks.

[S-Dafarra]

Even if it happened less often, it blocked a couple of times after several hours of testing.

[GiulioRomualdi]

With @MiladShafiee we noticed that the bug is still there, do you have any idea of how to solve it?

[GiulioRomualdi]

Unfortunately seems that error occurs every time we try to read from the imu data
@traversaro @prashanthr05

[GiulioRomualdi]

We (@prashanthr05 @MiladShafiee) noticed that the update rate of the thread is 10 microsecond.

https://github.com/robotology/xsensmt-yarp-driver/blob/590d7efae137686ea3b942f7babcae762eb7061d/xsensmt/XsensMT.cpp#L320-L323

In this case, the yarp device could ask for the data too quickly and it could create problems in the Xsens device.

[GiulioRomualdi]

Just tested, changing the thread period does not solve the problem 😢

[traversaro]

Hi, do you have any idea what changed since the last time you used it? Anyhow, if now the problem is easily reproducible, I would start improving a bit the code in https://github.com/robotology/xsensmt-yarp-driver/blob/590d7efae137686ea3b942f7babcae762eb7061d/xsensmt/XsensMT.cpp#L249 . If there is a timeout, probably for some reason those function fail, and we should inspect their return value for knowing which one is failing, and what is the precise failure message, eventually investigating by debugging even further down in the Xsens code.

If this is not useful, there are a few other possible steps to take:

• This repo vendors the version 4.8.2 of the BSD-licensed Xsens MT software suite SDK , released ~2 years ago. An updated version (the latest is 2019.2) is available at https://content.xsens.com/mt-software-suite-download . It may be worth to update the vendored code to the latest version, and see if by chance this fixes the problem (in that case it would be probably a Xsens bug)
• If I remember correctly, the communication with the Xsens IMU is actually done on a serial line, so we should sniff the traffic using some appropriate software and check what happens on the line when the sensor timeouts. Is the icub-head that stops writing? Is the IMU?

[prashanthr05]

@traversaro could you please assign this issue to me? I could possibly work on it in two weeks.

[HosameldinMohamed]

We have been testing the IMU with the robot for almost 3 weeks, this issue never happened. Only once when were tampering with the USB connection with iCub head. I think we disconnected the sensor then.

I am not sure what triggered this issue in the past and whether the hardware/software was the same.
CC @gabrielenava

[S-Dafarra]

Just to understand, how did you launch the device?

[HosameldinMohamed]

Just to understand, how did you launch the device?

This line was uncommented (I forgot to commit push it)
https://github.com/dic-iit/robots-configuration/blob/95a95388aecabb517d8c4b71c2e5e4ca9445e544/iRonCub-Mk1/iRonCub_wbd_noFeetFTs.xml#L49

This is the config file being called
https://github.com/dic-iit/robots-configuration/blob/devel_iCubGenova04/iRonCub-Mk1/hardware/inertials/waist-inertial.xml