Setup and Interfacing of a KUKA Robotics Lab

Abstract

To evaluate the feasibility of controlling KUKA robots via KUKAVARPROXY, the\nperformance of two libraries for communicating with KUKAVARPROXY is inves-\ntigated. It is shown that the BoostCrossCom C++ library and the jOpenShowVar\nJava library have comparable performance on a KUKA KRC 2. Both libraries\nhave a mean access time of 3ms for single connections, increasing too 12ms for 5\nsimultaneous connections.\n\nTo interface with a gantry mounted KR 16 the existing ROS Industrial driver\nis expanded to control mathematically linked external axes. The raw control that\nRSI allows can be a safety hazard for novice users, therefore a ROS driver using\nBoostCrossCom is implemented.\n\nROS interfaces for reading data from a Schunk FTC-50-80 force-torque sensor\nis developed using both RSI and BoostCrossCom. In order to control a Schunk\nSWS-020 tool change system from ROS, a service node using BoostCrossCom is\ncreated.