Planning and Control of High-Tech Motion Stage using ROS-Industrial

Alten Mechatronics, in cooperation with Bosch Rexroth and FEI, created a motion planner application for a 5-DOF motion stage in a Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM).

The application is a little outside the scope of other application of ROS-Industrial (i.e. robots), but the problems in these high-tech system can benefit hugely from advanced in robotics. In this case motion planning libraries from MoveIt! were implemented to generate collision free paths for the 5-DOF motion stage moving in a cluttered environment (refer to our 20 October 2014 blog post).

Building on earlier simulations, the application was extend to control the physical hardware. For this a communication was set up between ROS and the motion controller of the motion stage: The Bosch Rexroth NYCe 4000 motion controller. A driver for this platform was created in accordance to the simple message protocol, so that no development on the ROS side was needed: The NYCe controller acts as any other robot controller already supported by ROS-Industrial.

The result is application with ROS tooling (MoveIt!, RVIZ, etc.) and a high-tech motion platform able to plan and execute complex motions and increasing the speed of path execution with a maximum factor of 5 compared to current implementation.

More possibilities are open, like optimizing paths or planning constrained paths using the Descartes planner.

RIC-Europe Annual Meeting - 2015

RIC-EU Logo Small

We are happy to announce the detailed agenda for the ROS-Industrial Consortium Europe Annual Meeting 2015, which will take place right before RoboBusiness Europe on April 28th in Milan, Italy. Please note that the consortium dinner (included with your registration) will follow in the evening, so that you will have the chance to further network with peer members before attending RoboBusiness the day after.

Time : 2:00 PM - 6:30 PM CET on Tuesday April 28th, 2015

Place: Atahotel Expo Fiera, Via Keplero 12 20016 Pero Milan, Italy

Agenda:

  • 1400 Welcome and EU/Americas Consortia Updates, EU Projects overview
  • 1445 Members' activities and introduction of new members
  • 1545 Break
  • 1600 Invited presentations
    • IT+Robotics Srl - cROS: how ROS meets industrial needs
    • Magazino GmbH - a microWarehouse running on ROS
  • 1700 Strategic and Focused Technical Projects & other initiatives
    • TU Delft - CAD to ROS conversion
    • TU Delft - Generic IO
    • Robert Bosch GmbH - Real-time, bare-metal implementations of ROS
  • 1930 Dinner

Registration: registration link

How many people can we send?

  • Full Members - 3
  • Associate Members - 2
  • Research Members - 1
  • Additional Members - 150 EUR each

Not a member? Join Now

We look forward to seeing you in Milan!

ROS-Industrial Training 2015 (April 29)

Southwest Research Institute is coordinating with Caterpillar to host a ROS-Industrial Training Class April 29 – May 2, 2015 in Peoria, Illinois. Wednesday at 1 pm, we begin with a tour of a Caterpillar manufacturing plant, and end with a dinner in downtown Peoria. The detailed agenda can be found at the ROS-I website.

The classroom portion is similar to the training held last year with the same curriculum and an added session and lab option for Descartes. Please bring a laptop to the class with the ROS-I training Virtual Machine pre-installed. This class is geared toward individuals with a programming background who seek to learn to compose their own ROS nodes. Day 1 will be split into two tracks: the ROS Basics track will focus on introductory ROS skills; the Advanced track will focus on camera/perception topics. Day 2 will examine motion planning using MoveIt! as well as the Descartes planner and Perception concepts. Day 3 offers a lab programming exercise (with a choice of):
• Simple Perception Lab
• Simple MoveIt! Application
• Simple Descartes Application.
Registration is now open: http://rosindustrial.org/training-registration.

RIC-Americas Meeting Recap

ROS-I Consortium Americas Annual Meeting Attendees - 2015

ROS-I Consortium Americas Annual Meeting Attendees - 2015

Thanks to all who attended the annual meeting on March 27th ! Our group included representatives from ABB Robotics, Boeing, CAT, Clear Path Robotics, Deere and Co., Dematic, Ford, Fraunhofer IPA, GA Tech, HDT Robotics, Innovation Machine, Intelligrated, JR Automation, Northwestern University, OmniCo AGV, Open Source Robotics Foundation, Siemens, SwRI, Textron Systems, Vetex, UNC, UT Austin NRG, Wolf Robotics, Yaskawa Motoman Robotics.

We are grateful to our presenters are who recognized in this linked agenda document. For an overview of the accomplishments from the past year, please browse the RIC-Americas 2014 Year in Review Prezi (below). Note that Consortium members have access to the full proceedings of the event via the member portal.

Click to launch the presentation

Click to launch the presentation

ROS-I 3-yrs. Montage Video

Thanks to those in the ROS-I community who contributed to the ROS-I 3 yrs. Montage video! We would like to ackowledge:

  • Calibration of camera to robot: SwRI
  • Denso VS060 path planning using ROS-Industrial Cartesian Planner: TORK
  • Cartesian Planner plug-in for MoveIt!: BioRobotics Institute at Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna/MicroBio Robotics Institute at the Italian Institute of Technology/SwRI/GSoC
  • Process Simulate to ROS bridge: Siemens
  • Path planner optimization and planning request adapter plug-in for MoveIt!: IDEXX/RIC-Americas
  • Block pick and place: Technolution
  • Palletizing unknown products: Alten Mechatronics
  • Plastic crate depalletizing with lightweight robot: Intermodalics
  • Pick and place with obstacle avoidance: Deere and Co.
  • Factory-in-a-day, EU FP7 Factory of the Future 2013 Programme (FP7-2013-NMP-ICT-FoF)
  • Robotic 3D scanning: Institute Maupertuis
  • ROS-I training class pick and place exercise: RIC-Americas
  • ROS-Industrial Consortium Robotic Routing FTP, Testing at CNRC: RIC-Americas
  • ROS-Industrial Consortium Robotic Blending FTP Milestone 2 Update: RIC-Americas
  • 8-DOF microscope positioning for TEM: Alten Mechatronics
  • Multiscale teleoperation: UT Austin Nuclear and Applied Robotics Group
  • Mobile robotic 3D scanning: UT Austin Nuclear and Applied Robotics Group
  • Rob@Work3 logistics: Fraunhofer IPA
  • Euler automated warehousing: SwRI
  • PRACE dual-arm robot: Fraunhofer IPA
  • YouBots pick and place multiple arm cooperation: NIST
  • Dual arm robot coordinated motion: Fraunhofer IPA/Yaskawa Motoman Robotics
  • BMDA3 dual arm robot: Fraunhofer IPA/Yaskawa Motoman Robotics/SwRI
  • Rangar TT: Blue Force Robotics