COMAU and ROS driver for robot operations
Due to the needs to use a common platform based on ROS environment for all the partners of the consortium (and successively to customer or end users that wants to use the same solution), Comau worked on a novel ROS interface for the robots involved in WEEE management (classification and disassembling scenarios) that could be extended to the entire range of its robotics portfolio. In particular, the new ROS interface will be able to manage both joint and Cartesian positions from the robot to external world submitting the appropriate topics through TCP/IP channel.
Two different modalities have been developed for the two specific cases related to classification and disassembling scenarios:
- For the classification phase the use of the vision system able to detect the parts in the box has been integrated through a customized ROS driver permitting to send the data from vision system (cartesian positions) to the controller as showed in picture 2,
- In the disassembling case the needs is to have an high frequency rate in order to correct the robot motion with a feedforward control using the data of a force/torque sensor on the flange of the robot. In this case a frequency of 500 Hz permit to smoothly correct the path of the robot for delicate tasks of the disassembling phase such as continuous and contact processes (e.g. grinding or cutting). A specific option has been integrated in the ROS architecture, called SENSOR_TRACKING, able to read and write the sensor data in real time (up to 2 ms) and send it to the controller for the motion execution.
