ur_calibration

Package for extracting the factory calibration from a UR robot and changing it to be used by ur_description to gain a correct URDF model.

Each UR robot is calibrated inside the factory giving exact forward and inverse kinematics. To also make use of this in ROS, you first have to extract the calibration information from the robot.

Though this step is not necessary, to control the robot using this driver, it is highly recommended to do so, as end effector positions might be off in the magnitude of centimeters.

Nodes

calibration_correction

This node extracts calibration information directly from a robot, calculates the URDF correction and saves it into a .yaml file.

In the launch folder of the ur_calibration package is a helper script:

$ roslaunch ur_calibration calibration_correction.launch \
robot_ip:=<robot_ip> target_filename:="${HOME}/my_robot_calibration.yaml"

For the parameter robot_ip insert the IP address on which the ROS pc can reach the robot. As target_filename provide an absolute path where the result will be saved to.

Creating a calibration / launch package for all local robots

When dealing with multiple robots in one organization it might make sense to store calibration data into a package dedicated to that purpose only. To do so, create a new package (if it doesn’t already exist)

# Replace your actual catkin_ws folder
$ cd <catkin_ws>/src
$ catkin_create_pkg example_organization_ur_launch ur_robot_driver \
-D "Package containing calibrations and launch files for our UR robots."
# Create a skeleton package
$ mkdir -p example_organization_ur_launch/etc
$ mkdir -p example_organization_ur_launch/launch

We can use the new package to store the calibration data in that package. We recommend naming each robot individually, e.g. ex-ur10-1.

$ roslaunch ur_calibration calibration_correction.launch \
robot_ip:=<robot_ip> \
target_filename:="$(rospack find example_organization_ur_launch)/etc/ex-ur10-1_calibration.yaml"

To make life easier, we create a launchfile for this particular robot. We base it upon the respective launchfile in the driver:

# Replace your actual catkin_ws folder
$ cd <catkin_ws>/src/example_organization_ur_launch/launch
$ roscp ur_robot_driver ur10_bringup.launch ex-ur10-1.launch

Next, modify the parameter section of the new launchfile to match your actual calibration:

<!-- Note: Only the relevant lines are printed here-->
  <arg name="robot_ip" default="192.168.0.101"/> <!-- if there is a default IP scheme for your
  robots -->
  <arg name="kinematics_config" default="$(find example_organization_ur_launch)/etc/ex-ur10-1_calibration.yaml"/>

Then, anybody cloning this repository can startup the robot simply by launching

$ roslaunch example_organization_ur_launch ex-ur10-1.launch

2.1.5 (2024-06-17)

• Fix calibration (#704)
• Contributors: Felix Exner (fexner)

2.1.4 (2024-04-08)

2.1.3 (2023-12-18)

• Bump cmake minimum version for all packages in repo
• Contributors: Felix Exner

2.1.2 (2023-01-23)

2.1.1 (2023-01-23)

2.1.0 (2022-12-08)

• fix dependency for the organization calibration package (#549)
• Drop old C++ compiler flags (#577) Co-authored-by: Jochen Sprickerhof <<git@jochen.sprickerhof.de>>
• Remove boilerplate comments from package.xml files (#528)
• Contributors: Captain Yoshi, Felix Exner, Michael Görner

2.0.0 (2021-09-07)

• Add new features to the driver:
  • Cartesian position-based control
  • Cartesian twist-based control
  • Trajectory forwarding for execution on robot
  • More documentation and examples
• Fix package name in calibration example The example was referencing the library package where it should have been referencing the driver package.
• Added log handler for handling log messages from client library with … (#398)
• Added "On behalf of Universal Robots A/S" notice (#416) Removed copyright notice from LICENSE file, as the license file itself isn't copyrighted by FZI
• Replace two logging macros with ROS logging macros. (#330) Inside the driver we want to use plain ROS logging instead of the library's logging macros.
• Use ur_client_library package for building this driver #266 from UniversalRobots/separation
• Use namespace urcl instead of ur_driver
• Renamed library
• Made calibration use separated library, as well
• Merge pull request #166 from UniversalRobots/packaget Use the package type and not the header type as template parameter for communication
• Update ur_calibration to new template structure
• Use SPDX license identifiers. (#145) From https://spdx.org
• Merge pull request #1 from UniversalRobots/master Update from upstream repo
• catch all exceptions to bring them to output. (#98)
• Changed my name in every occurence
• Merge pull request #42 from gavanderhoorn/ur_calib_fix_yamlcpp_dep Fixup yaml-cpp linking and include paths in ur_calibration
• calibration: fix yaml-cpp include paths and linking.
• calibration: top-level pkgs don't export include dirs or libraries.
• calibration: remove boilerplate comments from build script.
• Renamed the driver to ur_robot_driver
• Simplified calibration interface When showing this to collegues it turned out that this was quite complicated. I reduced the target definition to a simple filename, while documenting the package approach separately.
• Updated calibration instructions
• Contributors: Felix Exner, Felix Mauch, G.A. vd. Hoorn, Lea Steffen, Mads Holm Peters, axelschroth, gavanderhoorn

0.0.2 (2019-07-03)

• Catch exception and log error when no connection can be established

0.0.1 (2019-06-28)

Initial release