Universal Robot

ROS-Industrial Universal Robot meta-package. See the ROS wiki page for compatibility information and other more information.

Installation

There are two different ways to install the packages in this repository. The following sections detail installing the packages using the binary distribution and building them from source in a Catkin workspace.

Using apt (Ubuntu, Debian)

On supported Linux distributions (Ubuntu, 18.04 (Bionic) and 20.04 (Focal), i386 and amd64) and ROS versions:

sudo apt-get install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-universal-robots

replace $ROS_DISTRO with melodic or noetic, depending on which ROS version you have installed.

Building from Source

There will soon be releases available for ROS Melodic and Noetic. However, for the latest features and developments you might want to build the packages from source.

NOTE: please prefer using the binary release (see previous section) over building from source where possible. Source installs will not be automatically updated by new package releases and require more work to setup.

The following instructions assume that a Catkin workspace has been created at $HOME/catkin_ws and that the source space is at $HOME/catkin_ws/src. Update paths appropriately if they are different on the build machine.

In all other cases the packages will have to be build from sources in a Catkin workspace:

cd $HOME/catkin_ws/src

# retrieve the sources (replace '$ROS_DISTRO' with the ROS version you are using)
git clone -b $ROS_DISTRO-devel https://github.com/ros-industrial/universal_robot.git

cd $HOME/catkin_ws

# checking dependencies (again: replace '$ROS_DISTRO' with the ROS version you are using)
rosdep update
rosdep install --rosdistro $ROS_DISTRO --ignore-src --from-paths src

# building
catkin_make

# activate this workspace
source $HOME/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash

Usage

With real Hardware

For using real hardware, please use the ur_robot_driver. Installation and startup instructions are available there separately.

If you have a particular old robot running Software CB1 or CB2, please use the ur_modern_driver instead.

CAUTION: Remember that you should always have your hands on the big red button in case there is something in the way or anything unexpected happens.

MoveIt! with real Hardware Additionally, you can use MoveIt! to control the robot. There exist MoveIt! configuration packages for all robots.

In the following the commands for the UR5 are given. For other robots, simply replace the prefix accordingly.

For setting up the MoveIt! nodes to allow motion planning run e.g.:

roslaunch ur5_moveit_config moveit_planning_execution.launch

For starting up RViz with a configuration including the MoveIt! Motion Planning plugin run:

roslaunch ur5_moveit_config moveit_rviz.launch

Usage with Gazebo Simulation There are launch files available to bringup a simulated robot.

Don't forget to source the correct setup shell files and use a new terminal for each command!

To bring up the simulated robot in Gazebo, run:

roslaunch ur_gazebo ur5_bringup.launch

MoveIt! with a simulated robot Again, you can use MoveIt! to control the simulated robot.

For setting up the MoveIt! nodes to allow motion planning run:

roslaunch ur5_moveit_config moveit_planning_execution.launch sim:=true

For starting up RViz with a configuration including the MoveIt! Motion Planning plugin run:

roslaunch ur5_moveit_config moveit_rviz.launch