MACS Dual-Arm Robots ROS Driver

This driver enables controlling the dual-arm robots in a ROS environment and in Gazebo.

• Control single arm using Rviz with MoveIt! plugin
• Control both arm using Rviz with MoveIt! plugin
• Dual-arm visulization and simulation in Gazebo 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

Control both arms using Rviz with MoveIt! plugin

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

$ roslaunch macs_dual_arm both_arm_bringup.launch

• Run the moveit ros move group

$ roslaunch macs_dual_arm both_arm_moveit_planning_execution.launch

• Start Rviz

roslaunch macs_dual_arm both_arm_moveit_rviz.launch

Visualize both arms with robot cell in Gazebo

• Clone this repository in your catkin workspace
• Change the address to the mesh files in macs_dual_arm/sdf/robot_cell.sdf
• Execute catkin_make in your catkin workspace
• Run roslaunch macs_dual_arm ur5e_macs_new.launch limited:=true to bring up the two UR5e arms attached to the robot cell in Gazebo

Todo

• Add moveIt! groups for each manipulator so that they can be controlled separately in RViz.

Authors

• Hui Xiao - Initial work, driver setup - xiaohuits

• Nishant Elkunchwar - Add both arms, design and add robot cell visual and collision geometries to gazebo world - thecountoftuscany

• Advisor: Xu Chen, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington

License

This repository is only for internal usage for now.

Acknowledgments