MACS Dual-Arm Robots ROS Driver

This driver enables controlling the dual-arm robots in an ROS environment.

• Control single arm using Rviz with MoveIt! plugin
• Control both arm using Rviz with MoveIt! plugin
• Dual-arm visulization and simulation with robot cell included
• Control the Hand-E grippers on both arms
• Enable velocity control of both arms
• Enable force control of both arms

Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development.

Prerequisites

Install Universal_Robots_ROS_Driver. Follow instructions provided here. You only need to build the driver packages. The UR robots in the lab already have remote control URCap installed. The calibration files are stored inside the /etc folder of this repo.

You must have your computer connected to both control boxes of the robots. By default, we have configered the IP of the left arm to be 192.168.0.2 and the right arm to be 192.168.0.3. The IP of your computer must be configered as 192.168.0.xxx to communicate with the robots. The submask of you IP configuration should be 255.255.255.0. To test if you have built connection, try to ping the robot ip:

$ ping 192.168.0.2

If the connection is correct, you should somthing like

PING 192.168.0.2 (192.168.0.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.0.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.085 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.166 ms

Try to ping the other robot ip to make sure both robot are connected.

Finally, clone and build this repo.

Control single arm using Rviz with MoveIt! plugin (left arm as example)

• Power up the robot. Open and run the program external_control.urp on the robot.
• Run the ur_robot_driver

$ roslaunch macs_dual_arm left_arm_bringup.launch

• Run the moveit ros move group

$ roslaunch macs_dual_arm single_arm_moveit_planning_execution.launch

• Start Rviz

roslaunch macs_dual_arm single_arm_moveit_rviz.launch

Authors

• Hui Xiao - Initial work, driver setup - xiaohuits

License

This driver is only for internal usage for now.

Acknowledgments