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universal_robot package for ROS Kinetic

asked 2017-02-13 06:22:14 -0500

Ilya Boyur gravatar image

updated 2017-02-16 01:16:00 -0500

Currently I am working on some movement planning projects with UR3, and one of the ideas is to use Raspberry Pi 3 model B as a computing center for robot's motion planning. The issue is that Ubuntu development team officially supports only Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial version for RPi3, and even Ubunty Trusty image for Raspberry Pi 2 is no longer maintained. As we tested, there is no problem to install Ubuntu Xenial with Kinetic on RPi3, but the problem is that officially universal_robot driver is not compatible with Kinetic, so it won't work.

1) Is there plans to develop ROS Kinetic version for driver, with compatibility with moveit planner?

2) Maybe there are other solutions for computing boards with Trusty + Indigo, do you know some?

Thanks in advance.

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answered 2017-02-13 09:06:40 -0500

BrettHemes gravatar image

updated 2018-11-15 09:06:34 -0500

gvdhoorn gravatar image

Edit: ur_modern_driver has Kinetic support and is now hosted at ros-industrial/ur_modern_driver. Be sure to use the kinetic-devel branch.


Original answer:

I prefer the ur_modern_driver over ur_driver (in universal_robot). Github page here.

It doesn't have official Kinetic support yet either but there is a user fork available that should work as discussed in issue 58. I would hope/expect that a Kinetic branch will be added soon as there is significant demand.

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I agree about ur_modern_driver being the preferred package, but just to clarify: only for the driver. universal_robot still provides the rest of the packages (robot support, moveit, etc).

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2017-02-13 11:48:03 -0500 )edit

And because of that support, it is not that clear when we are talking about Kinetic compatibility. I am using ur_modern_driver too, but it also has dependencies with universal_robot and that package just a replacer for old ur_driver

Ilya Boyur gravatar image Ilya Boyur  ( 2017-02-14 01:09:00 -0500 )edit
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answered 2017-02-15 13:13:27 -0500

gvdhoorn gravatar image

updated 2017-02-16 02:22:57 -0500

@BrettHemes already mentioned ur_modern_driver. I'll answer your question:

Is there plans to develop ROS Kinetic version for driver, with compatibility with moveit planner?

ur_driver is in maintenance mode, it will no longer be developed, and we recommend (perhaps urge is better word) to use ur_modern_driver instead. Its author has worked hard to make sure ur_modern_driver can be used as a drop-in replacement for ur_driver.

Note: I wrote ur_driver, not universal_robot. The other packages in the repository are not deprecated.

So your question becomes:

Are there plans to develop ROS Kinetic version of ur_modern_driver, [..]

As mentioned by @BrettHemes, there is a user-contributed fork that should already work on Kinetic. I have not used it myself, so I'll have to trust other users but I understand that it works.

[..] with compatibility with moveit planner?

This I don't understand: the driver is separate from MoveIt in all aspects. It exposes a FollowJointTrajectory action interface, which MoveIt may use, but that is about as much interaction as there is between MoveIt and the driver.

Can you clarify what you mean with that last part of your question?

Maybe there are other solutions for computing boards with Trusty + Indigo, do you know some?

Intel seems to have a pretty powerfull x86 compatible board with the Up series. Perhaps that is something you could look in to.


Edit:

so maybe you could point me on what is critical in interfacing motion controller with ur_modern_driver

For MoveIt that is simple: a robot driver needs to expose a FollowJointTrajectory action interface (at least when using the default MoveIt trajectory execution infrastructure).

and what motion planners ROS users use

I'm not sure that is something I can answer. The typical go-to planner for serial manipulators is MoveIt, but there are plenty of other motion planning frameworks that cover similar and other use-cases.

I've looked in topic you mentioned, but it seems that UR3 users also met issues with this fork

According to the latest comment it would seem to work?

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I am begginer at ROS, so I was asking about MoveIt compatibility because I have not learn a lot about robotic arm controllers yet, so maybe you could point me on what is critical in interfacing motion controller with ur_modern_driver and what motion planners ROS users use.

Ilya Boyur gravatar image Ilya Boyur  ( 2017-02-16 01:25:52 -0500 )edit

I've looked in topic you mentioned, but it seems that UR3 users also met issues with this fork. RPy 2/3 were used because they are just popped out and that was just interesting,what it can do. Actually, I just wondered if anyone have implemented some embedded solutions which works.

Ilya Boyur gravatar image Ilya Boyur  ( 2017-02-16 01:41:12 -0500 )edit

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Asked: 2017-02-13 06:22:14 -0500

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Last updated: Nov 15 '18