elite-robots2

elite-robots2 is an open source and community-driven package consisting of the ros-drivers for the arms manufactured by Elite. This ROS 2 package is a direct migration of the ROS package, which can be found here https://github.com/Elite-Robots/ROS

This package was developed by Neobotix. This package is currently maintained by Neobotix and Elite Robots.

At the moment, this ROS 2 package supports the EC66 variant. But a Pull Request would well and truly be accepted for other variants of the Elite arm.

Also this package consists of the simulation for the EC 66 arm.

Please feel free to use the issue tracker for requesting any feature requests or bug clearance.

We have tested the ROS 2 node in ROS-Humble (Ubuntu 22.04). All the developments must be made in the ROS-Rolling distro (Ubuntu 22.04).

Installation

We assume that ROS-Rolling or ROS-Humble is installed and the user has a basic understanding of ROS 2. Also make sure the installed distribution is sourced.

1. Install python3-pip

sudo apt install python3-pip

2. Install python dependencies

pip3 install elirobots transforms3d pytest rosdepc

3. Install control-msgs

sudo apt-get install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-control-msgs

4. Install moveit

sudo apt-get install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-moveit-*

5. Install Gazebo packages and ros2 controllers

sudo apt-get install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-gazebo-ros ros-$ROS_DISTRO-gazebo-ros2-control ros-humble-ros2-controllers ros-humble-ros2-control

Package setup

For this step, we need to create a colcon_ws (more details on the build system: https://docs.ros.org/en/humble/How-To-Guides/Ament-CMake-Documentation.html)

mkdir ~/ros_workspace/src
git clone git@github.com:neobotix/elite-robots2.git
colcon build --symlink-install

Do not forget to source the setup script of your workspace. For that you need to do:

cd ~/ros_workspace/
source install/setup.bash

If you do not want to do this step all the time, then do

echo "source your_colcon_workspace/install/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

This add's your setup script to the bashrc (need to restart the terminal for the first time after you add it).

Launching the nodes

Real robot:

1. Start the ros-node for bringing up the drivers:

ros2 launch elite_arm_driver bringup.launch.py

You would see at the end of the terminal with the rclpy log stating that Robot startup success.... If you do not get it, please check if you have switched the operating mode to the remote mode.

2. Start the planning pipeline by launching:

ros2 launch elite_moveit move_group.launch.py

You would see the RViz with the robot model spawned.

Note: Please make sure to do velocity scaling before sending goals to the robot. The velocity scaling parameters can be found in RViz under the motionplanning plugin. Please read through the Moveit 2 documentation carefully to know more about Moveit.

Simulated robot:

1. Starting the necessary Gazebo-ROS nodes, ros2 joint controllers and joint state broadcasters

ros2 launch elite_description simulate_ec66.launch.py

2. Start the planning pipeline by launching:

ros2 launch elite_moveit move_group_sim.launch.py use_sim_time:=True

You would see the RViz with the robot model spawned.