@stevenholwerda controlling the gripper remotely is possible, the question is whether an Arduino can do it or if you will need something more along the lines of a BeagleBone Black or Raspberry Pi to get access to more libraries. I have never used an Arduino so not sure.
As as far as communicating to the gripper here's some documentation on how to do that via Modbus RTU over either the USB to RS485 converter or directly via RS485. We're doing something similar on another project but we write all of our code in nodejs. The biggest difference with that project is we are strictly reading data so no writing to the registers but it looks rather straightforward just briefly reading over the docs.
http://support.robotiq.com/download/attachments/5963876/2-Finger-Instruction-Manual-060716.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1467835896840&api=v2#page54
If I get some spare time in the next week or two I may try to do this as I happen to have a spare gripper currently that is not deployed.
stevenholwerda
matthewd92
I worked on a nodejs library yesterday that would work on a RPi or BBB, it's a work in progress but I can activate, reset, fully open and fully close the gripper using the exposed methods. There's a gripper.js file in the repo as well that's an example of it working.
It it can be found at https://github.com/mbush92/robotiq-node
As part of a thesis project, I'm working on control strategies for two finger robots. Robotiq's 140 mm, 2 finger gripper seems ideal for this but I'm wondering about different methods of controlling the device. Ideally, I'd like to use a microprocessor such as an Arduino (or something similar but more powerful if the control strategies become too demanding) to send commands to the gripper. Would this be possible or are there any similar strategies I could use that would work well for this type of application?