Drivers/Controllers for EPSON robots

[Parshad Patel]

Hi all,

Is anyone currently working on/want to start working on Epson C4 manipulator ? The controller used is RC 700.

I am much interested to know about the developments/start developing ROS controllers+drivers for the robot.

Thanks !

[Shaun Edwards]

Parshad,

The very first task is to determine what communications interfaces are available on the robot and whether these interfaces can be used to drive motion.  Most robots allow for socket based communications, which we have used (some ways more elegantly than others) to remotely command motion.  Socket based communications already has support on the ROS side, leaving you to develop the controller server application.  If you choose a different communications interface, this might require development on both the Epson controller and the ROS side.

-Shaun

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[G.A. vd. Hoorn - 3ME]

Parshad,


As it was free, I looked into writing a driver for Epson some months ago
in SPEL+ using the RC+ trial version.

I just looked up my notes, and it appears the only real difficulty I had
was getting socket communication to work in the simulator. All other
bits were relatively easy. SPEL+ is a really nice language (for a
industrial platform anyway), and the Epson runtime allows good access to
the robot and controller.

As I could not get socket comm going reliably, I stopped working on it.

An alternative I looked at for communicating with the controller was the
'Remote Control' option. That would completely bypass sockets (so no
simple_message), but seemed like a nice way to get something going quickly.

If you contact me off-list, we could try and see whether we can continue
development.


Gijs