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is ROS industrial supported on ABB IRB 6400 m97a controller?

asked 2016-02-27 20:59:54 -0500

davidmangas gravatar image

hello, i'm new to this, and at my school we have an old IRB 6400 Robot and controller, what i want to know is, if is posible to stablish the comunication between ROS industrial and this controller, And what will it take to do this.

i dont have many info about this divices, but the manual link:Manual[irb 6400]

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answered 2016-02-28 01:43:10 -0500

gvdhoorn gravatar image

Please see the wiki/abb/Tutorials/InstallServer page and Is ROS industrial supported on ABB's IRB 1520 or IRB 1600 robots ? for what is needed in general to support a particular ABB robot.

In your particular case, I think the old controller may be problematic: if I understand you correctly, you have an S4C controller. The RAPID components of the driver were developed and tested on IRC5 controllers, so I'm not sure they are compatible.

I'd advise you to send a message to the ROS-Industrial mailing list and see whether someone has already tried this. If not, readers there might be able to help you.

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Hi there,

Did you ever solve this? I also would like to control an IRB 6400R through ROS

Gustaffson gravatar image Gustaffson  ( 2019-03-05 16:56:29 -0500 )edit

The limitation here is the controller, not the specific manipulator.

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2019-03-06 01:23:16 -0500 )edit

The problem we are having is that the memory of the controller is very limited, we would like to find a way to bypass the controller and control the manipulator via a computer. We thought using ROS-I might be a way to do this. Have you seen this done before? Shall I message the mailing list?

Gustaffson gravatar image Gustaffson  ( 2019-03-06 15:33:03 -0500 )edit
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bypass the controller and control the manipulator via a computer. We thought using ROS-I might be a way to do this.

No, that is not something the driver supports and is also not a goal of ROS-I (integration, not replacement).

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2019-03-06 15:35:05 -0500 )edit
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Unless I misunderstood you and your goal is to "drip feed" trajectories to the controller.

In that case it would be possible, but you'll have to change the driver.

The mailing list is deprecated, please use the Discourse category.

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2019-03-06 15:39:36 -0500 )edit

Correct me if I'm wrong,this is how I have it in mind: With ABB ROS Server installed on the controller I can send commands to the controler that then executes these commands (manipulator moves). I can send these commands w/ my laptop. This way I am working around the memory problem on the controller

Gustaffson gravatar image Gustaffson  ( 2019-03-06 15:49:19 -0500 )edit
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That is what "drip feeding" means, yes.

But the current driver implements a downloading approach, which means it caches entire trajectories on the controller before executing them.

So that'll have to change.

Perhaps someone has already done that, so a post to Discourse might be worthwhile.

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2019-03-06 15:51:18 -0500 )edit

Glad to know I was looking in the right direction. The last people working on the project were drip feeding from a FTP server and they indeed were bumping into the problem of the download approach. I will put a post out on the Discorse, I also hope that the ABB ROS Server works on a S4C.

Gustaffson gravatar image Gustaffson  ( 2019-03-06 15:57:35 -0500 )edit

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Asked: 2016-02-27 20:59:54 -0500

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Last updated: Feb 28 '16