ROS Additive Manufacturing (RAM)

ROS Projects
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We are not working with GCode at any stage of the software.
ROS Additive Manufacturing generates a trajectory that is a ROS message (defined here: https://gitlab.com/InstitutMaupertuis/ros_additive_manufacturing/blob/melodic/ram_msgs/msg/)

If you want to move a robot there are two options:

  • Generate a robot program, upload it on the robot and run it.
  • Use a ROS driver, connect to the robot and use MoveIt to move the robot.

For the first option you need to write a post-processor, that will convert the ROS Additive Manufacturing trajectory into a Kuka (in your case) program that contains the right instructions for your process.
This process is explained here: https://gitlab.com/InstitutMaupertuis/ros_additive_manufacturing/blob/melodic/ram_post_processor/README.md

For the second option you need to read the ROS Additive Manufacturing trajectory and feed it to MoveIt (we are not using this approach as of today).

There are post-processors for the Kuka robots inside the https://github.com/ros-industrial/robodk_postprocessors repository, I have started a repository that allows to use these post-processors as ROS services: https://gitlab.com/InstitutMaupertuis/ros_robodk_post_processors (I’m focusing on Motoman now but merge requests for Kuka are more than welcome!)

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