Controlling UR5 remotely from ROS on my computer

sisko

Hi guys.

I have  a Mac which is playing host to a VMware Fusion based installation of Ubuntu 16. In Ubuntu, I have ROS installed and a custom package in which I give a virtual ur5 a pose to visit.

Now, I want to execute the same node on a real UR5. I apologise here because from this point on I know very little about how to establish the necessary connection to the real ur5.

There is an RJ45 jack beneath the UR5 control box so I plugged on end of a cable in there and the other end into a usb adaptor which then plugs into my Mac. I choose "connect to linux" so the usb port is only recognised in my Linux virtual box.

In linux, I run ifconfig and there is a new ethernet port but it does not have an ip address.

I need help, please

matthewd92

First, you will need to go into the network settings on the robot and assign a static IP address.  From there I have not done anything with ROS so am not certain what to do next.

sisko

matthewd92 said:

First, you will need to go into the network settings on the robot and assign a static IP address.  From there I have not done anything with ROS so am not certain what to do next.

Thanks Matthew.

I had set a static ip address on the UR5. It saves the ip and network mask setttings but I can't ping it from the OSx host nor the Linux guest on my computer.

matthewd92

Not sure what that issue would be, we connect directly to the robots all the time from both our Mac OSx as well as VMware virtual machines.  Sounds like you have a network configuration problem somewhere.  Silly question, are you sure that the computer and the robot are operating on the same network range, i.e. 192.168.1.x on both robot and laptop for example?