- Set a status flag indicating whether or not the arm is in a “safe” position away from other hardware once it has dropped off items to a location as well as another flag so the robot arm knows it can pick up the items.
For (1), I will likely use the modbus tcp/ip server on the controller to just read/write coils for this
The robot already comes with a Modbus unit that maps all the current values (ModBus Server Data.pdf), I think it is the easiest. Now, to prevent that you accidentally overwrite another value, I would create a 2nd Modbus unit, where the registers can be mapped as input and your program can write on them.
- Taking an image of an object with robot-mounted camera, estimating the pose of an object, and updating a waypoint in the program based on this pose
If you take one of our partner cameras (Inbolt, Robotiq, OnRobot, SICK,…) they already come with a URCap that you can install and directly guides you through a standard calibration procedure, teaching objects wizard/setup, and the object poses can be directly found on the URCaps URScript/URCap programming nodes.
On the other hand, if you want to go with your own camera, here you have some ideas:
Setup Camera/Webcam with URCaps - URCap Development - Universal Robots Forum
UR5 communication issue with pc using ur ros driver - ROS - Universal Robots Forum
Which mostly depends on what camera and project you are working on: if you have a PLC, if you are using ROS, if the camera is only available through Ethernet TCP / UDP, if it is a webcam,…