Interfacing 7 DOF DYNAMIXEL-based robotic arm to ROS MoveIt!

In this section, we will discuss a 7 DOF robot manipulator called COOL arm-5000, which is manufactured by a company called ASIMOV Robotics (http://asimovrobotics.com/), and is shown in the following figure. The robot is built using DYNAMIXEL servos. We will see how to interface a Dynamixel-based robotic arm to ROS using dynamixel_controllers:

Figure 15: COOL robotic Arm.

COOL arm robots are fully compatible with ROS and MoveIt!, and are mainly used in education and research. Following are the details of the arms:

• Degree of Freedom: 7 DOF
• Types of Actuators: DYNAMIXEL MX-64 and MX-28
• List of Joints: Shoulder Roll, Shoulder Pitch, Elbow Roll, Elbow Pitch, Wrist Yaw, Wrist Pitch, and Wrist Roll
• Payload: 5 Kg
• Reach: 1 meter
• Work Volume: 2.09 m3
• Repeatability: +/- 0.05 mm
• Gripper with 3 fingers

Creating a controller package for a COOL arm robot

The first step is to create a controller package for a COOL arm for interfacing to ROS. The COOL arm...