universal-robots module

This repo is a module that implements the rdk:component:arm API resource to allow control over Universal Robots arms

Configuration and Usage

Navigate to the CONFIGURE tab of your machine in the Viam app. Add arm / universal-robots to your machine.

On the new component panel, copy and paste the following attribute template into your camera’s attributes field, editing the attributes as applicable:

{
    "host": "10.1.10.84",
    "speed_degs_per_sec": 60,
}

Note

For more information, see Configure a Machine.

Attributes

The following attributes are available for viam:universal-robots arms:

Name	Type	Inclusion	Description
host	string	Required	The IP address of the robot arm, specified as a string.
speed_degs_per_sec	float	Required	The maximum speed of the arm joints specified.

Example configuration:

{
    "components": [
        {
        "name": "myURArm",
        "attributes": {
            "host": "10.1.10.84",
            "speed_degs_per_sec": 60,
        },
        "namespace": "rdk",
        "type": "arm",
        "model": "viam:arm:universal-robots"
        }
    ]
}

Interacting with the Arm

First ensure that your machine is displaying as Live on the Viam App. Then you can interact with your Universal Robots arm in a couple ways:

• To simply view data from and manipulate your arm, use the CONTROL tab of the Viam App. For more information, see Control Machines.
• More advanced control of the arm can be achieved by using one of Viam's client SDK libraries

Building and Running Locally

Clone this repository to your machine and from the newly created folder start a new Docker container using the following commands:

git submodule update --init
docker pull ghcr.io/viam-modules/universal-robots:amd64
docker run --net=host --volume .:/src -e APPDIR='src' -it ghcr.io/viam-modules/universal-robots:amd64

Once inside the docker container build the binary using:

cd src && make appimages

Then, follow the instructions to add a local module to add the local instance of the universal-robots module to your machine. Provide an executable path pointing toward the appropriate AppImage file which will have been created within the packaging/appimages/deploy subdirectory.

Note

Simply running make instead of make appimages is a faster way to build but creates an executable that must be run from within the Docker container. If you are interested in making and testing many quick changes to this module it will likely be faster to ony build this way and then run viam-server from within the Docker container, pointing to a config file that has a local instance of this module wih an executable path of src/build/universal/robots. To download and run viam-server this way run:

wget https://storage.googleapis.com/packages.viam.com/apps/viam-server/viam-server-stable-x86_64
chmod +x ./viam-server-stable-x86_64
./viam-server-stable-x86_64 -config {PATH_TO_VIAM_CONFIG}

Troubleshooting

If the module fails to start successfully look through the error logs coming from viam-server. Some common issues errors are shown below along with solutions

Error	Solution
"Command is not allowed due to safety reasons..."	Use the UR pendant to switch the robot from Local Control to Remote Control
"Did not receive answer from dashboard server in time..."	It is possible that the host address provided is not correct, or that the E-stop has been pressed on the UR pendant

Future Work

• mac support
• integration tests
• address sanitizer support