My graduate research team is trying to design an end effector, which is going to be used on a UR robot. What is the best way to communicate between the robot control system and our design system? Our end effector is consisted of couple servo motors. We were using Arduino to control the servos. Any suggestion on how to control the servo or connect two control systems please?
Thank you
Have you checked the manual yet? Here’s a quick and dirty summary:
The robot has industrial voltage digital/analog I/O on an M8 port located on the tool flange.
The box itself has more digital and analog IO but also has a network port if you want to talk to something by TCP socket or XMLRPC remote calls through robot script commands.
If you just need simple on/off functionality for the gripper, I would use the robot 24V IO to trigger a relay to send 3.3V (or 5V) to your Arduino.
Another option would be to move from Arduino to a different single board computer (eg. Raspberry Pi) that has a network interface. Then you can send your commands over TCP socket or XMLRPC call.
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Thank you so much that helps me a lot!
Out of curiosity, would the TCP or XMLRPC connection be attached to the controller rack or to the tool? I ran into a similar issue and the options of communicating through the tool wires was very limited, using TCP would require to have long cables that go from the end-effector through the whole arm and reach the controller panel. Would that be it?
Yea, long cables to the controller. It has a hole to put a panel mount RJ45 passthrough on the control box if that helps.
Hi, can I ask if u used a dynamixel motor to connect to the UR5 for your gripper?