ABB ROS Server controlling IRB6400R through S4C Controller

ROS-Industrial
1

Hi everyone,

We have an ABB IRB6400R at work using a S4C controler. I would like to control the manipulator through an ABB ROS Server that will be installed on the S4C controller.

My questions to you are:
-Did someone try to do this on a S4C controller?
-How to deal with the downloading approach that the controller uses (it caches entire trajectories on the controller before executing them).

Hope you guys have some answers or hints, any feedback is welcome.

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I’m not aware of anyone using the current driver on anything but an IRC5, but it’s also not very complicated code, so it might be possible. There is the current assumption that network sockets can be used, so that would seem to be a “hard requirement” right now.

As to downloading vs streaming: the ABB driver currently uses downloading as it was assumed – at the time it was written – that the streaming approach would result in worse performance. That may not be true, so it’d be good to see whether the streaming approach can also be implemented.

I would not limit this question to S4C controllers specifically, although I can understand why you would – seeing as you have one.

It might be nice to see whether there are some streaming approaches available somewhere – anywhere, doesn’t need to be ROS-specific. If there are, we could either adopt or adapt them.

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