Work in progress
Using moveit2 to control a Universal Robot is not as difficult as people claim. The documentation of how to do so is really fractured. In this how-to, I try to condense the information so you can install ros2 on a Ubuntu 24.04 LTS system.
In this HOW to you learn to install ros2 jazzy and the driver for the universal robot.
Step 1 install ros2.
Source
Instructions copied from the deb installation of the official documentation with minor changes such as of giving less choice and install more tools
1.1. utf8 support
Some minimal installations do not have a UTF-8 locale installed. Make sure you have it installed. You can run locale to see if it is installed. If you don’t have it installed, run:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install locales
sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
1.2. Setup apt repositories.
ROS2 depends on Ubuntu’s Universe repository add that to your system if you have not done that allready
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository universe
The project also has its own repositories where they host precompiled binaries so you don’t need to build as much. They also created a dep package that is stored in the infrastructure github releases page to make setup easy. Please run this install the latest dep.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl -y
export ROS_APT_SOURCE_VERSION=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/ros-infrastructure/ros-apt-source/releases/latest | grep -F "tag_name" | awk -F'"' '{print $4}')
curl -L -o /tmp/ros2-apt-source.deb "https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/ros-apt-source/releases/download/${ROS_APT_SOURCE_VERSION}/ros2-apt-source_${ROS_APT_SOURCE_VERSION}.$(. /etc/os-release && echo ${UBUNTU_CODENAME:-${VERSION_CODENAME}})_all.deb"
sudo dpkg -i /tmp/ros2-apt-source.deb
1.3. Update your system
To make sure there are no mismatched dependencies.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
1.4. Install ROS2 and tools using apt
sudo apt install ros-jazzy-desktop ros-dev-tools ros-jazzy-ros2-control ros-jazzy-ros2-controllers
The above installation command adds around 1163 pkgs to a freshly installed
Tip: You can add ros-jazzy-ur to this apt install so you have one big installation progress where you can walk away and setup the robot. (ros-jazzy-ur add around 60 pkgs.)
Step 2: Install Universal Robot’s ROS2 driver
The ros2 driver for the cobots from Universal Robot is stored in the ROS repositories under the name ros-jazzy-ur. But you can also compile it from source following official documentation.
sudo apt install ros-jazzy-ur
Step 3 Prepare the robot
To move the robot, you need to run a program on the teaching pendant that makes a reverse connection to ros2. The program you need is stored in a ucap file that you need to install on the robot. The official documentation shows the process of how you install it. On that page there are also noted which settings must be enables. In the end the program should look at the picture below if your using a robot in the e-series.
To simulate the robot you can use ursim. A docker container (and previously an vm image) where you can run the teaching pendant on your pc. And there is an script that spins one up with the external control ucap already enabled. You should need to create the program.
docker installation instruction for ubuntu
rosrun ur_client_library start_ursim.sh -m ur5e
Step 4: Start the robot.
After you created the program you can start ros2 and control the robot in the way you want. Because this is the first
- launch the robot driver
To make any communication with the robot possable
source /opt/ros/jazzy/setup.bash
ros2 launch ur_robot_driver ur_control.launch.py ur_type:=ur5e robot_ip:=192.168.56.101 launch_rviz:=false
-
start the program
-
start moveit
ros2 launch ur_moveit_config ur_moveit.launch.py ur_type:=ur5e launch_rviz:=true
Programmatic control of the robot
You can write a program in c++ or python to (pre) plan motions. And execute it after a signal is received. Most of the programmers use c++ to send commands and the documentation of the c++ library is one of the best. And if you want to write your project i recommend following the entire moveit tutorial starting from “Your First C++ MoveIt Project” There is well a few changes because you are not controlling the panda robot arm. Here are all the changes:
- You haven’t created a workspace. It is just a folder that contains another folder called src. The location does not mather but ill but it inn my projects folder.
mkdir -p ~/projects/ur_moveit_tutorial_workspace/src
cd ~/projects/ur_moveit_tutorial_workspace/src
# then follow with the commands given in "Your First C++ MoveIt Project"
ros2 pkg create \
--build-type ament_cmake \
--dependencies moveit_ros_planning_interface rclcpp \
--node-name hello_moveit hello_moveit
- MoveGroup is not called “manipulator” change it it to “ur_manipulator”
- When starting at MoveItVisualTools “base_link” does exists you can use “world”.
Python
The python interface binds a subset of the moveit c++ API provides. But you do not need a colcon project which makes it easy for rapit prototypical in a repl shell. Might i recommend ipython.
The installation process isn’t nicely documented and you need an incarnation for the ur robot to work
You need to install the ros-jazzy-moveit-py package.
Create a file called moveit_cpp.yaml Whith the flowing contents and remember the full path.
planning_pipelines:
pipeline_names: ["ompl"]
plan_request_params:
planning_attempts: 3
planning_pipeline: ompl
max_velocity_scaling_factor: 1.0
max_acceleration_scaling_factor: 1.0
Change the robot model and the path to the yaml file in this python script.
robot_model = "ur5e"
moveit_cpp_path = "/path/to/moveit_cpp.yaml"
moveit_config = (
MoveItConfigsBuilder(robot_name="ur", package_name="ur_moveit_config")
.robot_description_semantic(Path("srdf") / "ur.srdf.xacro", {"name": robot_model})
.trajectory_execution(file_path="config/moveit_controllers.yaml")
.moveit_cpp(moveit_cpp_path)
.to_moveit_configs()
).to_dict()
ur = MoveItPy(node_name="ur", config_dict=moveit_config)