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Optimax Systems is America’s largest optics prototype producer within the medical, protection, and house industries. Optimax optics are aboard Mars rovers, Pluto New Horizons, Tess, ROMAN, Mercury messenger, the ISS, and extra – if it has a lens and goes to house, Optimax in all probability manufactured it. Of course, Optimax additionally provides customized lenses right here on Earth for analysis and protection.
Optimax’s R&D workforce approached PickNik for assist in bettering the smoothness of their robots utilizing the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS) platform of their freeform optics manufacturing course of. A freeform optic is an optic that’s not rotationally symmetric. The manufacturing course of of those optics begins with milling the tough form, then sprucing with an ABB industrial arm and freeform metrology instruments. Final smoothing is then carried out on a Universal Robot or an ABB robotic arm to scale back any errors from earlier steps.
Optimax had points with jerky motions and latency with the ROS 1 ABB arm setup, which had been the first motivators to make use of a new ROS 2 driver. They additionally had a want to maneuver to ROS 2 for higher long-term assist, in addition to for the power to make use of the ROS 2 Control library, a standard low-level controller interface. A driver based mostly on ROS 2 Control additionally permits to be used of PickNik’s admittance controller to take care of fixed power throughout sprucing. However, no ROS 2 driver for ABB manipulators existed on the time, necessitating the event and launch of abb_ros2, a ROS 2 driver for ABB robotic arms.
Solution
To transition the prevailing ROS 1 structure to ROS 2, PickNik and Optimax collaborated to develop abb_ros2, an open-source driver for ABB arms that makes use of ROS 2 Control. ABB supported this effort by offering entry to their proprietary robotic simulation software program, RobotStudio, which was used to check driver performance throughout growth without having {hardware}.
Two PickNik engineers labored with Optimax R&D engineers to research Optimax’s information from a ROS 1 prototype. PickNik analyzed the ache factors from the ROS 1 implementation, which centered on latency and jerky movement. Then we developed a plan to deal with each of those ache factors, in tandem with the event of a ROS 2 ABB driver.
The driver communicates immediately with an ABB robotic or simulation, or it might spoof ROS 2 Control drivers for testing with no robotic or proprietary simulation software program. This permits for fast iteration on planning with out the necessity for customized tooling. The driver additionally helps coordinating motions with further joints connected to the robotic (exterior axes), such because the bottom-mounted gantry Optimax makes use of to extend their workspace. Finally, the motive force additionally integrates with the ABB StateMachine add-in], which can be utilized to manage the robotic through a state machine and IO manipulation.
With the newly-developed ROS 2 Control driver, Optimax had entry to new instruments to unravel their issues. First, enter toolpaths had sharp corners that exceeded the jerk limits of the robotic joints. This may cause {hardware} points corresponding to faults or long-term harm. Second, the toolpaths Optimax makes use of might have as much as 500,000 waypoints, which prompted extreme latency when despatched to the robotic. PickNik’s personal MoveIt Ruckig trajectory processing plugin was in a position to clean the waypoints such that the ultimate processed trajectory would obey jerk limits, and ship waypoints separately to keep away from reminiscence and latency limitations brought on by one large trajectory.
Outcome
This collaboration between PickNik and Optimax resulted within the launch of an open-source ROS 2 driver for ABB robots, which the ROS 2 group has extensively used. The driver was delivered forward of schedule and beneath funds, permitting for growth of further options past the preliminary scope with assist from the open-source group. PickNik’s assist has helped Optimax combine ROS 2 into their manufacturing processes and to leverage the newest trajectory processing options supplied by MoveIt and Ruckig.
This has considerably elevated the general stability of Optimax’s robotic sprucing platform and by way of functionality, has allowed Optimax to extend the dimensions of components that they will polish. In addition, PickNik’s collaboration improved Optimax’s information assortment and boosted the gross sales of their power controller product.