Use tare to calibrate each of Baxter's Arms.

The "simple" calibration for each arm is called tare. Tare is recommended once a week if the robot is being used every day.

Tare is done by putting the robot in a known location and reseting the offset torques so that the output is an expected value. Ideally, this would be accomplished with a reliable value of zero torque, but since it's difficult to obtain zero torque on all joints (impossible on some), a known position with known non-zero torques is chosen. A reboot is necessary after both arms are tared or calibrated.

Remove the grippers from both of Baxter's arms.

Start tare from an RSDK terminal session using:

$ rosrun baxter_tools tare.py -h

tare.py [ARGUMENTS]

-h, --help This screen -t, --tare [LIMB] Tare the specified limb [left/right]

For common issues specific to using calibrate with Baxter, check out the Troubleshooting page.