Bosch IMU never starts the first time

[S-Dafarra]

Brief description of the request/failure

Every time we switch on the robot head, the Bosch IMU device fails to start and we get the following error:

578	9.241254	ERROR	First read from the device failed, check everything is fine and retry
581	9.251476	ERROR	cannot create device <imuBosch_BNO055>
582	9.251492	ERROR	ControlBoardWrapper: error while opening subdevice
603	9.677945	ERROR	xsensmt: Sensor timeout, no sensor measurement received in the last 0.212098 seconds.
605	9.677950	ERROR	xsensmt: Sensor timeout, no sensor measurement received in the last 0.217149 seconds.
1057	21.947317	ERROR	One or more devices failed opening... see previous log messages for more info

To run the robot is sufficient to restart the yarprobotinterface.

Detailed context

log_icub-head_bosch_not_starting.txt

Accompanying material

[julijenv]

Hi @S-Dafarra ,
it is a known issue, it is on the pipe of issue to be resolved, it should be fixed in the near, stay tuned

[Nicogene]

This patch(robotology/yarp#2034) introduced an error message in case the first 10 read from the sensor fail(at startup time).
Maybe increasing the number of trial to ~50 (50x0.01ms) could fix the problem.
I suspect that once you turn on the icub-head the IMU takes some time to wake up.

[Nicogene]

I want to underline that probably it is a problem that exists since forever, simply before robotology/yarp#2034 there was that other problem robotology/yarp#1994.

BTW the imubosch mounted on the rfe board seems to not have this issue and it is ready to be used(robotology/icub-main#570).

[Nicogene]

I tried on iCubGenova02 with 1000 trials, and the read on i2c doesn't fail, but it read garbage, after the power on this condition is always false:

      double sum_squared = quaternion_tmp.w() * quaternion_tmp.w() +
                             quaternion_tmp.x() * quaternion_tmp.x() +
                             quaternion_tmp.y() * quaternion_tmp.y() +
                             quaternion_tmp.z() * quaternion_tmp.z();

        if( (sum_squared < 0.9) || (sum_squared > 1.2) )
        {
            dataIsValid = false;
            return;
        }

I don't remember the rationale behind this check.

[S-Dafarra]

I think it is checking the quaternion to have unit norm 🤔

[julijenv]

Would it be possible to find the reason why it needs 2 tarts to have the condition accpeted? or how long it takes to have the condition accpeted?

[Nicogene]

The reason of the fail of the condition is this robotology/yarp#1994.

Removing that check, at the first startup the imu doesn't work, it gives only 0.0 and nan.

how long it takes to have the condition accpeted?

I'm afraid forever, unless restarting the yarprobotinterface 😢

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs.

[pattacini]

@Nicogene @julijenv
What's the status of this?

Is the problem related to software or hardware?
Is the RFE available on iCubGenova04?

[Nicogene]

I honestly don't know how to approach this issue 🤔

In my opinion is not something software related, but I don't know how to check it.
The imu on the rfe should not have this kind of problem, but unfortunately iCubGenova04 doesn't have it.

[traversaro]

I honestly don't know how to approach this issue 🤔

I just noticed that in the error log posted by @S-Dafarra there is also a related error from the xsensmt driver (see https://github.com/robotology/xsensmt-yarp-driver/blob/6c63c90ebb15dc42dc78a44ff5abef3051e8b18a/xsensmt/XsensMT.cpp#L71) :

603	9.677945	ERROR	xsensmt: Sensor timeout, no sensor measurement received in the last 0.212098 seconds.
605	9.677950	ERROR	xsensmt: Sensor timeout, no sensor measurement received in the last 0.217149 seconds.

I wonder if the two issues may be related, even if the device are attached to the robot using two different bus.

If we want to investigate the issue, I would try the following:

• Detach the xsensmt waist IMU and see if the issue with the bno055 persists.
• Instead of using the udev-assigned names such as /dev/icub-i2c-imu in https://github.com/robotology/robots-configuration/blob/8464607c26ce4bcefad5f85a72e84a76e026cbff/iCubGenova04/hardware/inertials/head-inertial.xml#L6 and try to use the raw device, and see if the problem persists.
• Try to connect to the sensor on the first trial (when it fails to open via YARP) using a different driver, for example https://github.com/evdrvn/bno055-i2c or https://github.com/ghirlekar/bno055-python-i2c, and see if the issue persist also in that case.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs.

[S-Dafarra]

This has not been fixed yet and the suggestions in #876 (comment) have not been tried AFAIK.

[Nicogene]

A workaround could be do the restart of the device inside of the code of imuBosch_BNO055 in case of failure of startup, in order to avoid to re-run the yarprobotinterface

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs.

[traversaro]

Hi good friend @Stale, I am afraid that this issue is still present.

[julijenv]

@Nicogene , do u have any other good ideas to make it ok?

[julijenv]

A bug fix has been requested on icub-fix channel and will be addressed when FW guy available
icub-tech-iit/fix#145

[Nicogene]

@Nicogene , do u have any other good ideas to make it ok?

Unfortunately not, but I'd try what @traversaro suggested here -> #876 (comment)

[DanielePucci]

Hi all, unfortunately we keep having this issue. So, I am going to re-open it. Let un know how you prefer to proceed

CC
@maggia80

[Uboldi80]

a feasibility study was recently carried out to introduce RFE master on the robot head, which should help solve this problem as well as the problem of face expressions #1083.
It remains to be seen whether this upgrade will be introduced or not.

[github-actions]

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[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically closed due to inactivity. Feel free to open it again if needed.