Use ROS1 or bridge to ROS2

[agraussgrimbergen]

For a project I am responsible for outfitting a Fanuc m710-50 with ROS software and automated cutting capabilities. I have a quick question whether it would be better to combine the ros-industrial drivers with ros1 or ros2 via ros_bridge.

I have found that this package has documentation up to melodic (I assume noetic would also work), but ROS 1 noetic is soon to reach its end of life.

So I could use the ROS1 drivers, but then use ROS2 with MoveIT2 for the automated cutting and communicate via a ros_bridge. The advantage would be the newer ROS2 packages with ongoing support and development, but the addition of the ros_bridge increases the project complexity slightly.

The other options would be to keep everything in noetic and upgrade everything if a ROS2 driver ever becomes available.

I would love to hear whether you have any opinion on this choice.

[gavanderhoorn]

For commercial deployments I would suggest reaching out to Fanuc and ask about their ROS 1 and ROS 2 driver offerings.

They appear to be partly based on what we host here, so switching to them should be easy.

This would get you support from and involvement of the OEM, which I believe is very important.

If you really want to use fanuc_driver or fanuc_driver_exp I would indeed suggest to use the ros1_bridge. As the loop is not closed 'over' the bridge, performance should be sufficient. In the end it's really only just a FollowJointTrajectoryAction server and a JointState topic.

[agraussgrimbergen]

Thank you for the response, I will contact Fanuc to see what drivers they can offer.

[gavanderhoorn]

Just to clarify, as I've received questions about this: my comment here (ie: the suggestion to reach out to Fanuc) should not be considered an endorsement of Fanuc's ROS 1 nor ROS 2 drivers in any way.

I merely wanted to let @agraussgrimbergen know about their existence.