Looking to buy UR16e, what is current (18th Dec 2019) ROS support?

ROS
1

Hi

My company is looking to buy a cobot with extensive ROS support. We were previously using the Sawyer and its Intera SDK, but we are now looking at alternatives.

I have not been able to find out if the UR16e has a similar level of SDK and driver support as the rethink sawyer. To take an example, if I wanted to create a simple planar movement path with the UR16e in ROS, with c++ or python, using sensors such as RGBD cameras for collision avoidance, visualizing the model and output in RVIZ, does the capability exist now to do this?

Thanks!

PS apologies to jbm who I private messaged, I could not post in the forum before but now appear to have permissions, thank you!

2

Hi Ross,
Where are you located? You should check out this page on our main website to find the local contact near you. https://www.universal-robots.com/distributors/

Also, we are proud to say that UR has offically released a ROS driver for UR. You can read more about it here: Universal Robots launches ROS driver

3

Thank you for your response! Someone has contacted me from UK distribution.

Hope you have a great christmas!

4

Hi

Looking at the github page, the driver only has launch files for the 3, 5 and 10, not the 16. Is it actually supported out of the box?

Thanks

5

This is worth opening an issue on the GitHub around this if you see something missing. I would recommend that.

6

We’ve waited since October for ROS support of the 16e. There is a thread here on the forum. The last response was that it wasn’t “high priority”

7

Please see github issues ROS support for UR16e · Issue #73 · UniversalRobots/Universal_Robots_ROS_Driver · GitHub and Add support for UR16e · Issue #460 · ros-industrial/universal_robot · GitHub. We will keep the discussion there.