ABB

ROS-Industrial ABB meta-package. See the ROS wiki page for more information.

The abb_experimental repository contains additional packages.

Contents

Branch naming follows the ROS distribution they are compatible with. -devel branches may be unstable. Releases are made from the distribution branches (hydro, indigo, kinetic and noetic).

Branching is done only when needed (ie: because of breaking changes between distributions).

Older releases may be found in the old ROS-Industrial subversion repository.

MoveIt configurations

All provided MoveIt configurations were moved to the moveit subdirectory in #214. These packages can be used as-if they were still located in the root of the repository. Catkin will still be able to locate them.

Status

The packages in this repository are community supported. This means they do not get support from the OEM, nor from the ROS-Industrial consortia directly (see also the support level badge at the top of this page).

Maintenance and development is on a best-effort basis and depends on volunteers.

If you are looking for official support, we suggest contacting your local ABB branch office.

Naming Convention

All robot support packages and MoveIt configurations follow the naming conventions as described in REP-I0007.

Building

On newer (or older) versions of ROS

Building the packages on newer (or older) versions of ROS is in most cases possible and supported. For example: building the packages in this repository on Ubuntu Focal/ROS Noetic systems is supported. This will require creating a Catkin workspace, cloning this repository, installing all required dependencies and finally building the workspace.

Catkin tools

It is recommended to use catkin_tools instead of the default catkin when building ROS workspaces. catkin_tools provides a number of benefits over regular catkin_make and will be used in the instructions below. All packages can be built using catkin_make however: use catkin_make in place of catkin build where appropriate.

Building the packages

The following instructions assume that a Catkin workspace has been created at $HOME/catkin_ws and that the source space is at $HOME/catkin_ws/src. Update paths appropriately if they are different on the build machine.

These instructions build the noetic-devel branch on a ROS Noetic system:

# change to the root of the Catkin workspace
$ cd $HOME/catkin_ws

# retrieve the latest development version of abb. If you'd rather
# use the latest released version, replace 'noetic-devel' with 'noetic'
# NOTE: 'noetic-devel' is compatible with ROS Noetic. Use the correct branch
# for the OS + ROS version you're building these packages for
$ git clone -b noetic-devel https://github.com/ros-industrial/abb.git src/abb

# check build dependencies. Note: this may install additional packages,
# depending on the software installed on the machine
$ rosdep update

# be sure to change 'noetic' to whichever ROS release you are using
$ rosdep install --from-paths src/ --ignore-src --rosdistro noetic

# build the workspace (using catkin_tools)
$ catkin build

Activating the workspace

Finally, activate the workspace to get access to the packages just built:

$ source $HOME/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash

At this point all packages should be usable (ie: roslaunch should be able to auto-complete package names starting with abb_..). In case the workspace contains additional packages (ie: not from this repository), those should also still be available.

Installation and usage

Refer to Working With ROS-Industrial Robot Support Packages for information on how to use the files provided by the robot support and MoveIt configuration packages. See also the other pages on the ROS wiki.

Refer to the tutorials for information on installation and configuration of the controller-specific software components.

Migration of abb_driver

The abb_driver package was migrated from this repository to ros-industrial/abb_driver as part of ros-industrial/abb#179. See that issue for rationale and a description of the process.

Please file enhancement requests and report issues for abb_driver on the issue tracker of ros-industrial/abb_driver.