Motor control using ROS, Epos2 and CANOpen

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Hello everyone,

I happen to be stuck for a few days now by problems some of the forum's members apparently already encountered, whence this question. I hope the latter will not be considered as superfluous, and that it could prove to be helpful to others.

My computer runs a 64-bit Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) OS, and ROS Noetic Ninjemys (rosversion -d says noetic). I besides installed the package "ros_canopen" from the "package.ros.org" repositories using sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-ros-canopen.

My current goal is to manage to send rotation speed commands to an AC motor equipped with a Hall sensor (similar to this model) through an EPOS2 70/10 electric drive, using the CANOpen communication protocol, and thus, the "ros_canopen" package. My problem is that I actually don't know where to start to achieve such objective.

After some researches, I ended up trying to follow the steps proposed here on the forum. I was though not even able to complete the first stage, consisting in setting-up SocketCAN. I met indeed two issues:

1. When loading the drivers, the command sudo modprobe pcan returns modprobe: FATAL: Module pcan not found in directory /lib/modules/4.19.0-9-amd64
2. When running sudo ip link set can0 up type can bitrate 1000000, which says sudo ip link set can0 up type can bitrate 1000000. The device "can0" does besides not appear in the list provided by ifconfig -a.

Could you please give me a clue about how to overcome those problems ?

An additional difficulty may come from the fact that I have chosen thus far to connect the EPOS2 controller to my computer using its USB output only. I do not employ any CAN-to-USB interface, simply because I do not have one to hand for now. Is such a device necessary to perform motor control ?

Could you finally please recommend me a tutorial, or give me pieces of advice, regarding motor control using the "ros_canopen" package.

Thanks a lot, regards,

Julien.