ZAL manipulators

This package connects the Robotiq end effectors 3-Finger Adaptive Robot Gripper and 2-Finger 2F-85 Gripper with Universal Robot arms.

Installation

Dependencies

This software requires a system setup with Robot Operating System (ROS). It is recommended to use Ubuntu 20.04 with ROS Noetic and Catkin.

The packages from Universal Robot as well as those from Robotiq are required.

Building

# source global ros
source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

# create a catkin workspace
mkdir -p catkin_ws/src && cd catkin_ws

# clone the repository
git clone https://gitlab.zal.aero/stephan.rediske/zalmani

# install dependencies
sudo apt update
rosdep update
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -y

# build the workspace
catkin build

# activate the workspace (ie: source it)
source devel/setup.bash

Usage

To start the simulation, run one of the top-level launch files, e.g.:

roslaunch zalmani_gazebo ur10e_3f.launch

Note

For simplicity, an argument has been added to the top-level launch files to switch between position and effort interface. Just use the flag ur_use_effort_controller:=false to start the UR with position interface and robotiq_use_effort_controller:=false to start the end effector with position interface. By default the UR starts with a position interface and the end effector with an effort interface.

There are more flags available and for clarity, a lot of them have been looped through to the top-level launch files. In your own application you would usually only pass the necessary flags to the top-level files and set all other values with the 'default=' argument in lower level files.

For example:

roslaunch zalmani_gazebo ur10e_3f.launch ur_use_effort_controller:=true robotiq_use_effort_controller:=false spawn_z:=1.0