How do I control the panda robot?

[rickstaa]

How do I control the panda robot?

[rickstaa]

Use a desktop for the FCI workstation

When running the real-time kernel most desktops are suited for controlling the Franka robot. You can check if your desktop is suited by performing the network tests found in the panda_documentation (for more information see this post).

How to control

If your desktop is suited you can control it directly on the desktop. However, if you want to use your laptop you have to make sure that your laptop is on the same network as the FCI workstation and control unit. If this is done, you can both use the C++ libfranka API directly or use the ros_control package. Below you will find a quick example for controlling the panda robot via your laptop while having the desktop serve as an FCI workstation.

Control FCI workstation on the same network with laptop

A guide on how to connect to a roscore on the same network can be found here. In short, you have to:

• Make sure that both the workstation and the laptop are on the same ethernet network.
• You then start the franka_control (which includes the roscore) node on the workstation.
• You then set the ROS_MASTER_URI environmental variable on the laptop to the value displayed by the roscore on the workstation.
• You then set the ROS_HOSTNAME env variable equal to your hostname (if the hostname can be resolved) or set the ROS_IP env variable equal to your IP. An example script for doing this can be found here.

After this, you can communicate with all nodes, topics etc. that is running on the workstation.