Integration of 6-axis manipulator and 2-axis positioner (external axes)

[gavanderhoorn]

@tdl-ua

I’ve changed moveit_planning_execution.launch and related scripts to launch two namespaced instances of industrial_robot_simulator when argument sim is set to true . I had tried to “push down” the simulator and joint_trajectory_action server instances individually using ROS_NAMESPACE before without success. Your approach using groups seems to work without issues.

I’ve left a comment on my PR that I believe is important.

You may have done it on purpose (as you have no hw yet), but your controllers.yaml as it is right now will not work correctly when trying to execute trajectories for the two groups separately.

@tdl-ua

I think the challenge as far as I can tell now is the combined planning of workpiece and manipulator trajectories with collision avoidance and then also the synchronization of end-effector commands (e.g., welding torch on/off).

Any ideas for avenues to go down or suggestions of tools that can be used or adapted to ultimately achieve this final objective would be much appreciated.

I would take a look at Jmeyer1292/hybrid_planning_experiments by @Jmeyer, which builds upon the work by @Levi-Armstrong et al (trajopt_ros and tesseract).

Their presentation at ROSCon’18 last year shows what those packages can do: Optimization Motion Planning with Tesseract and TrajOpt for Industrial Applications (video, slides).