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Universal_Robots_Isaac_Driver

Universal Robots have become a dominant supplier of lightweight, robotic manipulators for industry, as well as for scientific research and education. It is the core value of Universal Robots, to empower people to achieve any goal within automation.

Universal Robot e-Series family

The goal of this driver is to provide a stable and sustainable interface between UR robots and NVIDIA Isaac-SDK that strongly benefit all parties.

NVIDIA Isaac-SDK is the main software toolkit for NVIDIA Robotics. Included in the Isaac SDK is the ability to easily write modular applications and deploy them on UR Robots.

If you would like to help fill in the Survey - any feedback, suggestion or contribution - is highly appreciated!

Contribution to the driver are welcome.

Features

  • Works for all CB3 (with software version >= 3.7) and e-Series (software >= 5.1) UR robot or simulator. Simulator can be found on Universal Robots website.

  • Can be used with NVIDIA Jetson hardware platform see Universal Robots website.

  • Transparent integration of the teach-pendant. Using the URCaps system, a program is running on the robot that handles control commands sent from Isaac side. With this, the robot can be paused, stopped and resumed without restarting the Isaac driver.

  • Use the robot's speed-scaling. When speed scaling is active due to safety constraints or the speed slider is used, this gets correctly handled on the Isaac side, as well slowing down trajectory execution accordingly.
    Note: Other Isaaac-controllers can be used with this driver, but may behave wrong if the speed slider isn't set to 100% or if speed scaling slows down the robot. Also, pausing can only be used when ur_controller is used.

  • Using UR robots without interacting with the teach pendant It is possible to interact with the dashboard server through an Isaac Applications. A codelet serves as an interface between the dashboardserver on the robot and an Isaac application. A robot program can e.g. be started and stopped through an Isaac application. For details see documentation on DashboardClientIsaac or documentation on how to use it.

How to report an issue

If you encounter any bugs or incomplete functionality please report them as issues.

To create an issue on the Issue Board please use the default template.

Contents

This repository contains the ur_robot_driver and a couple of helper packages, such as:

  • apps: Sample applications, which can be used for controlling an UR robot.

  • controller_stopper: A small external tool that stops and restarts Isaac-controller based on the robot's state. This can be helpful when the robot is in a state where it won't accept commands sent from Isaac.

  • ur_controller: Speed-scaling-aware controller introduced with this driver.

  • ur_msg: Messages created specific to be used within this driver and to communicate with this driver. See documentation on how to use ur_msg in applications

  • ur_robot_driver: The actual driver package.

Requirements

This driver requires a system setup with Isaac SDK. Isaac currently only supports Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with NVIDIA graphics card drivers see here Isaac SDK prerequisites.

The driver requires Isaac SDK version 20202.2. Isaac SDK can be downloaded from Isaac download, then follow Isaac setup to install dependencies and set it up.

Setting up the driver

Note: The Isaac driver is build on top of a C++ client library that abstracts the robot's interfaces. This library needs to be cloned together with the C++ client library repository for the driver to work. See the following setup guide:

  1. Create a folder to store the driver and client library
$ mkdir isaac_driver && cd isaac_driver
  1. Clone the Universal_Robot_Client_Library:
$ git clone -b boost https://github.com/UniversalRobots/Universal_Robots_Client_Library.git
  1. Clone this repository
$ git clone https://github.com/UniversalRobots/Universal_Robots_Isaac_Driver.git
  1. In this repository create a symlink "ur_client_library" to the client library.
# /home/username/isaac_driver/Universal_Robots_Isaac_Driver/ur_client_library -> /home/username/isaac_driver/Universal_Robots_Client_Library/

$ ln -s /home/username/isaac_driver/Universal_Robots_Client_Library/ /home/username/isaac_driver/Universal_Robots_Isaac_Driver/ur_client_library
  1. In the Isaac SDK folder create a symlink "packages/universal_robots" to this repository.
# /home/username/isaac/sdk/packages/universal_robots -> /home/username/isaac_driver/Universal_Robots_Isaac_Driver

$ ln -s /home/username/isaac_driver/Universal_Robots_Isaac_Driver /home/username/isaac/sdk/packages/universal_robots

Setup the robot

For using the ur_robot_driver with a real robot you need to install the externalcontrol-1.0.5.urcap which can be found inside the resources folder of this driver.

Note: For installing this URCap a minimal PolyScope version of 3.7 or 5.1 (in case of e-Series) is necessary.

For installing the necessary URCap and creating a program, please see the individual tutorials on how to setup a CB3 robot or how to setup an e-Series robot.

Alternatively to use the driver without the URCap you can activate headless_mode, when starting the driver, see documentation on headless_mode.

Quick start sample applications

This driver servers as an interface between Universal Robots and Isaac SDK's application.

To start any applications, you have to stand in the Isaac SDK folder, see Nvidias documentation. This driver comes with two sample applications, that can be used to control an UR robot.

For more detailed documentation of launching the applications see the seperate tutorial

  1. The application simple joint control can be run inside the Isaac SDK folder, with the following command. Remember that you have to stand in the isaac/sdk folder to launch the application.

    $ bazel run packages/universal_robots/apps:simple_joint_control

    This should open a jupyter notebook in your browser. Follow instructions there to manually control joints or digital io channels on the arm. Remember to update the ip for the arm and the robot model.

  2. The application predefined waypoint movement moves between some preset waypoints. Make sure to update the waypoints based on the actual setup, and make sure the path between the waypoints are obstacle-free. To run the application, see below. Remember that you have to stand in the isaac/sdk folder to launch the application.

    $ bazel run packages/universal_robots/apps:shuffle_box_hardware -- --robot_ip "192.168.56.1" --robot_model "ur5e" --headless_mode false

    For the parameter robot_ip insert the IP address on which the Isaac driver can reach the robot. Update robot_model according to the robot model that you are using, robot model is one of ur3, ur5, ur10, ur3e, ur5e, ur10e, ur16e. headless_mode can be used to enable headless_mode or not.

  3. The application shuffle box hardware moves between some preset waypoints. This app assumes a vacuum pump is connected through the digital io interfaces and that the robot model is a UR10. Make sure to update the waypoints based on the actual setup, and make sure the path between the waypoints are obstacle-free. To run the application, see below. Remember that you have to stand in the isaac/sdk folder to launch the application.

    $ bazel run packages/universal_robots/apps:shuffle_box_hardware -- --robot_ip "192.168.56.1" --headless_mode false

    For the parameter robot_ip insert the IP address on which the Isaac driver can reach the robot. headless_mode can be used to enable headless_mode or not.

  4. All samples can be run on Jetson. Follow instructions to deploy the sample apps.

  5. Follow Nvidias guide to build your own applications.

Once any of the applications are running you can start the robot program with the loaded URCap. From that moment on the robot is fully functional. You can make use of the Pause function or even Stop the program. Simply press the Play button again and the ISAAC driver will reconnect.

Inside the Application terminal running the driver you should see the output Robot ready to receive control commands.

Acknowledgement