ROS 2 General Teaching Pendant

This repository provides a general teaching pendant for robotic arms with different kinematic configurations.
Just plug it in and play.

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Dependencies

• Development platform: ROS 2
• Communication with motor drivers: EtherCAT
• EtherCAT master: IgH
• ROS 2 Control hardware interface wrapper: ethercat_driver_ros2
• UI framework: Qt6
• Simulation: Gazebo
• Plot JKQTPlotter installation instruction

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UI Demonstration

1.Move

Left side is cartesian motion. Right side is joint motion. The bottom bar is the controller bar.

2. Task

This page can define a task for robot.

3. Setting

TCP

Set a tool coordinate for robot. You can input tool size or get one by tcp calibration.

Parameter identification

Be careful it could be very dangerous using this. Make sure you know what you're doing and use emergency stop!

Do robotics dynamic parameter identification. After that, you may drag and teach you robot.

4. Plot

Position/Velocity/Acceleration/Effort Graph

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Usage

1. Install Dependencies

Install all the dependencies listed above.

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2. Copy A Configuration

Here is a demo configuration. Be careful with the package name.

Notes

a. Configure yaml for each motor in your robot in /driver_config. Refer ethercat_driver_ros2 for more information.

b. Modify /config/fake_ur_config.ros2_control.xacro

Basically you only need to modify the slaves' position and param file's name.

c. Substitude your own urdf file

Fill in the template here and substitude /config/fake_ur_config.urdf.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<robot name="fake_ur" xmlns:xacro="http://www.ros.org/wiki/xacro">

  <xacro:macro name="fake_ur">
  <!-- add your own urdf here -->
  <link name="world"/>
  <joint name="base_joint" type="fixed">
    <parent link="world"/>
    <child link="base_link"/>
    <origin xyz="0 0 0" rpy="0 0 0"/>
    <axis xyz="0 0 1"/>
  </joint>
  </xacro:macro>
  <gazebo>
    <plugin filename="gz_ros2_control-system" name="gz_ros2_control::GazeboSimROS2ControlPlugin">
      <parameters>$(find fake_ur_config)/config/ros2_controllers.yaml</parameters>
    </plugin>
  </gazebo>
  <xacro:fake_ur/>
</robot>

d. Adjust parameters in /config/grtp.yaml

Parameter table

• coordinate_system: fix the base/tool/end effector coordinate system which must present in urdf.
• cartesian_limits: cartesian movement limitation.
• drag_params: drag and drop teaching parameters. D for Damping. M for Assistance. Strongly recommend to set D to 100 and set M to 0 first. Then slowly adjust them to a reasonable value.

3. Run

Replace names with your own config package

ros2 launch xxx test.py   # no need to connect to real hardware. It will start with a gazebo
ros2 launch xxx real.py   # real hardware
ros2 run auto_store_ui auto_store_ui # ui