SoftBank NAO V6: Known Problems & Fixes

Console flooded with LogMessage type-conversion warnings at runtime

Symptom

When running naoqi_driver against a robot with NAOqi 2.5, the console is flooded with repeated warnings: "Call argument number 0 conversion failure from LogMessage to LogMessage. Function signature: (LogMessage)." The issue affects both release and source-compiled versions of the driver under ROS Indigo and Kinetic.

Affected

NAOqi 2.5; ROS Indigo and Kinetic; libqicore 2.3 (packaged) vs 2.5 (on robot)

Fix / Workaround

no confirmed fix

naoqi_driver node hangs indefinitely in rosLoop after version 0.5.9

Symptom

After upgrading naoqi_driver to version 0.5.10, the driver node starts but becomes stuck in a while loop at Driver::rosLoop(), hanging at the 'get language service is resetting' stage and never completing initialisation. The process must be force-quit with Ctrl-C.

Affected

naoqi_driver 0.5.10; naoqi_bridge_msgs 0.0.8; ROS Indigo; Ubuntu 14.04

Fix / Workaround

Community-reported workaround: revert naoqi_driver to version 0.5.9.

Controller Spawner cannot find controller_manager and /tf not published in Gazebo simulation

Symptom

Launching nao_gazebo_plugin_H25.launch results in the warning "Controller Spawner couldn't find the expected controller_manager ROS interface" and /tf is not published, leaving the simulation non-functional. The issue was introduced after version 0.0.4 of the package.

Affected

nao_virtual; regression introduced after version 0.0.4

Fix / Workaround

Community suggestion (maintainer @mikaelarguedas): remove the namespace from naoGazebo.xacro. A full fix was pending further testing at the time the thread went quiet.

naoqi_driver fails to connect to robot running NAOqi 2.9 with default port

Symptom

When launching naoqi_driver against a robot running NAOqi 2.9.3, the driver immediately exits with "Connect error: 111: Connection refused" and the required process dies. The same driver and setup connects successfully to a robot running NAOqi 2.5.11.13.

Affected

naoqi_driver master branch; NAOqi 2.9.3; ROS Noetic

Fix / Workaround

Community workaround (maintainer @victorpaleologue): specify nao_port:=9503 in the launch command instead of the default port.

naoqi_driver crashes with 'Can't find service: ROS-Driver-Audio' after ~1 minute

Symptom

After approximately one minute of running, naoqi_driver throws a fatal exception "terminate called after throwing an instance of 'qi::FutureUserException': ALProxy::ALProxy — Can't find service: ROS-Driver-Audio" and the required process dies, shutting down the entire stack.

Affected

naoqi_driver; ROS Kinetic; pepper_bringup installed via apt-get

Fix / Workaround

Community suggestion (maintainer @nlyubova): remove the apt-get installed packages and recompile naoqi_driver and pepper_bringup from source.

Depth image published with encoding 16UC1 instead of mono16, causing conversion errors

Symptom

The depth camera image topic published by naoqi_driver uses the encoding '16UC1' rather than 'mono16', causing downstream nodes to emit errors such as "Unable to convert 16UC1 image to bgr8" and "Raw image topic has unsupported encoding '16UC1'". Tools such as image_saver and image_proc fail to process the depth stream.

Affected

naoqi_driver (version not specified in thread)

Fix / Workaround

no confirmed fix

Simulated NAO finger joints oscillate and destabilise robot in Gazebo

Symptom

Immediately after starting the Gazebo simulation, the NAO finger joints oscillate wildly and their joint-state values go out of bounds. The instability can propagate to other joints, causing the whole simulated robot body to shake.

Affected

nao_virtual / nao_gazebo_plugin; nao_gazebo_plugin_H25.launch

Fix / Workaround

Community suggestion (@jackietom): change the hardware interface in the URDF from PositionJointInterface to EffortJointInterface to stop general body shaking; finger shaking is due to missing finger controllers and can be worked around by removing fingers from the URDF.

gazebo_naoqi_control plugin fails to load when SDK path has no trailing slash

Symptom

Via the community nao_gazebo driver: The Gazebo simulation plugin fails to load at runtime with the error "Exception occured in the Load function of plugin with name[gazebo_naoqi_control] and filename[libgazebo_naoqi_control.so]. This plugin will not run." The cause was identified as incorrect path concatenation when the NAOQI_SIM_SDK environment variable lacks a trailing slash.

Affected

NAOqi Simulator SDK 2.1.2.17, ROS Indigo, Gazebo 2.2.5

Fix / Workaround

A community contributor identified the path concatenation bug and the maintainer pushed a fix to the repository.

naoqi_driver_node missing from apt-installed ROS Noetic package

Symptom

After installing the packaged naoqi_driver for ROS Noetic via apt, running roslaunch fails with "ERROR: cannot launch node of type [naoqi_driver/naoqi_driver_node]: Cannot locate node of type [naoqi_driver_node] in package [naoqi_driver]." Inspection of the installed package directory confirms that no naoqi_driver_node executable is present.

Affected

ROS Noetic, Ubuntu 20.04, apt-installed naoqi_driver package

Fix / Workaround

no confirmed fix

ALTracker service not available on Pepper running NAOqi 2.9

Symptom

Calling app.session.service("ALTracker") at runtime on a Pepper running NAOqi 2.9 raises "RuntimeError: Cannot find service 'ALTracker' in index". The same code works correctly on a Pepper running NAOqi 2.5, indicating the service was removed in version 2.9.

Affected

Pepper NAOqi 2.9 (works on NAOqi 2.5)

Fix / Workaround

Community members confirmed that ALTracker was removed in NAOqi 2.9 and suggested using the HumanAwareness service instead, including its humansAround property and signals for tracking. The original reporter confirmed this resolved their use case.

import qi fails with undefined symbol error when LD_LIBRARY_PATH order loads wrong libqi.so

Symptom

When cross-compiled libqi-python is deployed on the robot and ROS Noetic is also installed, executing import qi raises "ImportError: /home/nao/.local/bin/libqi_python/lib/python3.8/site-packages/qi/qi_python.so: undefined symbol: _ZN2qi10Translator16setDefaultDomainERKNSt7__cxx1112basic_stringIcSt11char_traitsIcESaIcEEE". The error occurs because sourcing the ROS Noetic setup script prepends /opt/ros/noetic/lib to LD_LIBRARY_PATH, causing qi_python.so to load the wrong libqi.so at runtime.

Affected

Pepper robot, Python 3.8, GCC 10.3, Boost 1.71, ROS Noetic also installed

Fix / Workaround

Community-identified workaround: ensure the custom libqi build directory appears before the ROS Noetic lib directory in LD_LIBRARY_PATH, e.g. export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/nao/.local/bin/libqi/lib:/tmp/gentoo/opt/ros/noetic/lib.

naoqi_driver crashes with 'ALMemory::getData Data not found RobotConfig/Body/Type' against NAOqi SDK 2.8

Symptom

When running naoqi_driver against a NAOqi SDK 2.8 simulation, the driver node crashes immediately after detecting the robot model with the exception: "terminate called after throwing an instance of 'qi::FutureUserException' what(): ALMemory::getData Data not found RobotConfig/Body/Type". The driver is unable to proceed past robot model detection.

Affected

naoqi-sdk-2.8.5.10-linux64, naoqi_driver cloned from source, Ubuntu 18.04

Fix / Workaround

Community suggestion (@victorpaleologue): the driver is confirmed to work with NAOqi 2.5; for 2.8, replace all version references (2, 9, 2_9, 2.9) in the driver code with the corresponding 2.8 equivalents, though this is unconfirmed.

naoqi_driver crashes with 'ALMemory::getData Data not found RobotConfig/Body/Type' when connecting to virtual robot

Symptom

When connecting naoqi_driver to a locally-running NAOqi SDK virtual robot, the driver crashes after receiving robot model information with the exception: "terminate called after throwing an instance of 'qi::FutureUserException' what(): ALMemory::getData Data not found RobotConfig/Body/Type". The driver is unable to complete initialization.

Affected

ROS Kinetic 1.12.7, Ubuntu 18.04, naoqi SDK virtual robot

Fix / Workaround

no confirmed fix

ALMemory subscriber raises RuntimeError: Invalid signature at runtime

Symptom

Calling memory_service.subscriber("TouchChanged") via libqi-python raises "RuntimeError: Invalid signature" at runtime. The same script runs successfully when executed directly on the robot using the robot's own installed Python environment, but fails when connecting remotely with a newer version of libqi-python.

Affected

libqi-python qi 3.1.1, NAOqi 2.5.10.7, Python 3.8.5

Fix / Workaround

no confirmed fix

SpeechRecognition service not found; service name mismatch at runtime

Symptom

Via the community pepperchat driver: At runtime, calling audio.setClientPreferences() raises "RuntimeError: ALAudioDevice::setClientPreferences ALProxy::ALProxy Can't find service: SpeechRecognition". The reporter determined the service on the robot is named AISpeechRecognition rather than SpeechRecognition, causing the lookup to fail.

Affected

pynaoqi-python2.7-2.5.7.1-win32-vs2013

Fix / Workaround

No confirmed fix for the full speech module. A workaround was adopted by recording audio directly on the robot, downloading the file via SCP, and sending it to a speech API from the client side.

Gazebo NAOqi plugin fails to connect: repeated "Connection refused" warnings

Symptom

Via the community nao_gazebo driver: After launching the plugin, repeated warnings appear: "qimessaging.transportsocket: connect: Connection refused" and the virtual robot cannot be connected to. HAL and NAOqi do not appear to initialize correctly, and the robot falls immediately on simulation start instead of holding its pose.

Affected

simulator-sdk-2.1.2.17-linux64, naoqi-sdk-2.1.2.17-linux64, Ubuntu 14.04, Gazebo 2.2.3/2.2.6; also reported on Ubuntu 16.04, ROS Kinetic, Gazebo 7

Fix / Workaround

One reporter resolved the issue by reinstalling on a different PC with the same OS and software versions. No general fix confirmed.

nao_bringup pose_controller fails to start due to NaoQI import error

Symptom

Launching nao_bringup nao_full.launch causes pose_controller to crash with "RuntimeError: Error importing NaoQI. Please make sure that Aldebaran's NaoQI API is in your PYTHONPATH." even when PYTHONPATH appears to include the NaoQI SDK path. This also causes pose_manager to fail with "Could not connect to required 'joint_trajectory' action server".

Affected

ROS Kinetic, naoqi_pose; also reported on ROS Indigo with nao python C++ SDK 2.1.4.13

Fix / Workaround

One reporter resolved it by specifying the network_interface parameter explicitly: roslaunch nao_bringup nao_full.launch nao_ip:=... roscore_ip:=... network_interface:=...

nao_speech.py fails to start due to missing cfg module after migration

Symptom

Running nao_speech.py raises "ImportError: No module named cfg" because the naoqi_speechConfig cfg file was lost during a repository migration. The node cannot start.

Fix / Workaround

The missing naoqi_speech.cfg was re-added by a maintainer and nao_speech.py was updated accordingly; the reporter confirmed the fix worked after pulling both repos.

rqt unable to subscribe/publish NAO Gazebo controller topics due to naming mismatch

Symptom

In the nao_virtual simulator, rqt cannot subscribe to or publish controller topics because the controller name format output by nao_gazebo_plugin does not match what rqt expects. In version 0.0.5 the launch file fails to load controllers; in version 0.0.4 the controller names are incompatible with rqt.

Affected

nao_virtual 0.0.4, 0.0.5

Fix / Workaround

Pulling a specific upstream commit resolved the issue for the reporter.

Gazebo crashes immediately with missing libgazebo_naoqi_control.so plugin

Symptom

Via the community nao_gazebo driver: Gazebo opens but crashes immediately at launch with the error 'Failed to load plugin libgazebo_naoqi_control.so: libgazebo_naoqi_control.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory' followed by a segmentation fault.

Fix / Workaround

no confirmed fix

libqi-python connection to NAOqi 2.9 robot fails with 'RuntimeError: disconnected'

Symptom

Attempting to connect to a Pepper robot running NAOqi 2.9.5 via libqi-python causes the program to crash with the error: '[W] qi.FutureSync: Error in future on destruction: 'disconnected''. The connection fails at app.start() regardless of the approach used.

Affected

NAOqi 2.9.5.172; libqi-python 3.1.1 and 3.1.4; Python 3.10.12; Ubuntu 22.04.3; Pepper 1.8

Fix / Workaround

no confirmed fix

NAO robot falls down immediately after simulation starts in Gazebo

Symptom

When simulating NAO in ROS Jade with Gazebo 5, pressing the start button causes the robot to immediately fall down completely. The robot does not maintain its standing posture at simulation start.

Affected

ROS Jade; Gazebo 5

Fix / Workaround

no confirmed fix

Choregraphe project fails to load German language translation and ALSignsAndFeedback service not found

Symptom

Running a Choregraphe project on Pepper that supports only English produces two errors: 'Cannot find service 'ALSignsAndFeedback' in index' and 'Fail to load translation for the uploaded behavior, lang 'de_DE''. Adding German in project properties does not resolve the issue.

Fix / Workaround

no confirmed fix

nao_speech node fails with 'Can't find service: ALAudioDevice'

Symptom

Running the nao_speech node after connecting via nao_bringup produces the error: 'Could not create Proxy to "ALAudioDevice". Exception message: ALProxy::ALProxy Can't find service: ALAudioDevice'. The speech function is unavailable.

Fix / Workaround

no confirmed fix

focus.take() fails with 'focus is owned by another activity' on NAOqi 2.9 Pepper

Symptom

When attempting to control a Pepper robot running NAOqi 2.9 via libqi-python, calling focus.take() raises 'RuntimeError: could not take the focus: focus is owned by another activity'. This occurs regardless of whether the tablet has the launcher open, a QiSDK app running, or a default app running.

Affected

NAOqi 2.9; Pepper robot

Fix / Workaround

no confirmed fix