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jproberge

Hello @albertgo ,


Thanks for your question! I assume your 2F gripper is connected to the end effector's connector? If so, I must say that using ROS to interact with any tools mounted on the newest e-series robots seems indeed to be challenging at the moment.

Indeed, when you choose to connect the gripper to the UR5e's wrist, you connect it directly to the UR5e's computer (control box). More precisely, the gripper becomes a UART device connected to the robot's computer (thus not directly accessible from the "external world"). So if your goal is to use our ROS package to control your gripper from an external computer, it therefore cannot "talk" directly with the gripper anymore. Also, the gripper unfortunately cannot be disconnected from within the UR control box without having to open and alter the computer's enclosure (of course, not recommended). Thus, it is not possible to connect your ROS machine to the gripper from the control box, which would have been great because it would have allowed one to take advantage of not using a long cable and not having to attach the said cable to the manipulator.

For now however, this still seems to be the way to integrate any tool properly with ROS when using an e-series robot: using a long cable to connect your ROS machine to the gripper.

In another vein, I've heard Universal Robots is planning to update their ROS driver such that their UART port (at the wrist) would be forwarded as a virtual serial port on the ROS machine, which would totally fix this issue (see this presentation: , page 15). Thus, maybe there's hope that this will be fixed in the near-future. I just checked now and it still look like "work in progress" at the moment.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to me, should you have any other questions.

Best regards,

Jean-Philippe Roberge, 
ROS Package Developper / Maintainer 
j-p.roberge@robotiq.com

Rui

jproberge said:

Hello @albertgo ,


Thanks for your question! I assume your 2F gripper is connected to the end effector's connector? If so, I must say that using ROS to interact with any tools mounted on the newest e-series robots seems indeed to be challenging at the moment.

Indeed, when you choose to connect the gripper to the UR5e's wrist, you connect it directly to the UR5e's computer (control box). More precisely, the gripper becomes a UART device connected to the robot's computer (thus not directly accessible from the "external world"). So if your goal is to use our ROS package to control your gripper from an external computer, it therefore cannot "talk" directly with the gripper anymore. Also, the gripper unfortunately cannot be disconnected from within the UR control box without having to open and alter the computer's enclosure (of course, not recommended). Thus, it is not possible to connect your ROS machine to the gripper from the control box, which would have been great because it would have allowed one to take advantage of not using a long cable and not having to attach the said cable to the manipulator.

For now however, this still seems to be the way to integrate any tool properly with ROS when using an e-series robot: using a long cable to connect your ROS machine to the gripper.

In another vein, I've heard Universal Robots is planning to update their ROS driver such that their UART port (at the wrist) would be forwarded as a virtual serial port on the ROS machine, which would totally fix this issue (see this presentation: , page 15). Thus, maybe there's hope that this will be fixed in the near-future. I just checked now and it still look like "work in progress" at the moment.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to me, should you have any other questions.

Best regards,

Jean-Philippe Roberge, 
ROS Package Developper / Maintainer 
j-p.roberge@robotiq.com

Dear Jean-Philippe, 

I am using the 2F-85 gripper with an AUBO-i5 robot. Could you please let me know if 
it is possible to connect my ROS machine to the gripper from the control box? Many thanks for your help.

Best regards,

Rui