ROS 2 Kortex

Kinova® Kortex™ is the common software platform behind all of the products in the Gen3 family (Gen3 and Gen3 lite). It unifies the inner workings of the various robots and their related external tools, like the API.
https://www.kinovarobotics.com/product/gen3-robots

ROS2 Kortex is the official ROS2 package to interact with Kortex and its related products. It is built upon the Kortex API, documentation for which can be found in the GitHub Kortex repository.

Build status

ROS 2 Distro	Humble	Iron	Rolling
Branch	main	main	main
Build Status
Release Status	coming soon	coming soon	coming soon

Note: There are several CI jobs checking against future upstream changes see detailed build status for a full list of CI jobs and for more information.

Getting started

1. Install ROS 2.

   If you're a developer, we recommend using Rolling to get the latest features and fixes.

   Rolling Release: Install ROS2 Rolling
   Latest Release: Install ROS2 Iron
   Stable LTS Release: Install ROS2 Humble

   After installing a version of ROS, source the setup.bash, which will set the $ROS_DISTRO environment variable.

2. Install this package from binary

   sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-kortex-bringup
   

3. Optional: install MoveIt Configuration and Cyclone DDS

   If you have a 7dof arm:

   sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-kinova-gen3-7dof-robotiq-2f-85-moveit-config
   

   If you have a 6dof arm:

   sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-kinova-gen3-6dof-robotiq-2f-85-moveit-config
   

   If you plan to use MoveIt, it is recommended to install and use Cyclone DDS.

   sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-rmw-cyclonedds-cpp
   export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_cyclonedds_cpp
   

4. Go to Usage section

Contributing to this repository or building from source

Note: It is recommended to use a released binary version of this package and apt install it. If you want the latest version of this repository for testing latest fixes check out testing with pre-released binaries: https://docs.ros.org/en/rolling/Installation/Testing.html

If the bug fix you need isn't in a released version or If you want to build this repository from source or contribute back to the repository read on.

1. Make sure that colcon, its extensions, and vcs are installed:

   sudo apt install python3-colcon-common-extensions python3-vcstool
   

2. Create a new ROS2 workspace:

   export COLCON_WS=~/workspace/ros2_kortex_ws
   mkdir -p $COLCON_WS/src
   

3. Pull relevant packages:

   cd $COLCON_WS
   git clone https://github.com/Kinovarobotics/ros2_kortex.git src/ros2_kortex
   vcs import src --skip-existing --input src/ros2_kortex/ros2_kortex.$ROS_DISTRO.repos
   vcs import src --skip-existing --input src/ros2_kortex/ros2_kortex-not-released.$ROS_DISTRO.repos
   

   If you plan on simulating the robot with ignition or gazebo, make sure to pull the additional simulation packages. If you're on ROS2 Humble, run

   vcs import src --skip-existing --input src/ros2_kortex/simulation.humble.repos
   

   otherwise

   vcs import --skip-existing --input src/ros2_kortex/simulation.repos
   

   If you plan on using MoveIt, you must make sure that you have it already installed either from binaries or by building it from source.

4. Install dependencies, compile, and source the workspace:

   rosdep install --ignore-src --from-paths src -y -r
   colcon build --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
   source install/setup.bash
   

   By default, colcon will use as much resources as possible to build the ROS2 workspace. This can temporarily freeze or even crash your machine. You can limit the number of threads used to avoid this issue, we found a good tradeoff between build time and resource utilisation by setting it to 3 :

   colcon build --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release --parallel-workers 3
   

Simulation Issues

Please note, at this time there are two known issues you with simulation

1. Gazebo + Mimic Joints for the Robotiq Gripper
2. Protobuf version mismatch

Gazebo and Mimic Joints

A pull request has been made to gz_ros2_control which is how this repository was tested in simulation. The pull request won't be merged as the fix should be done upstream in gz-sim. Once a fix is available ros2_robotiq_gripper will be re-released and an update should fix any workarounds.

In the meantime if you need simulation checkout the upstream pull request link:

• Upstream Issue: gazebosim/gz-sim#1684
• Upstream Pull Request: ros-controls/gz_ros2_control#86
• Tracking Issue: PickNikRobotics/ros2_robotiq_gripper#7

Protobuf

Due to mismatched protobuf version that ships system and used by Gazebo simulator compiling twice may be required. You will only run into this if you have certain other gazebo related code in your workspace while compiling this repository. If errors are encounter you must clean your workspace and run colcon build in two steps:

1. build everything except kortex related packages
2. build the packages that where skipped

sudo apt install python3-colcon-clean # if you don't have colcon-clean installed already
colcon clean workspace -y
colcon build --packages-skip-regex '.*kortex.*' '.*gen3.*'
colcon build --packages-select-regex '.*kortex.*' '.*gen3.*'

Usage

To launch and view the robots URDF run:

ros2 launch kortex_description view_robot.launch.py

To simulate the 7 DoF Kinova Gen3 robot arm with mock hardware:

ros2 launch kortex_bringup gen3.launch.py \
  robot_ip:=yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy \
  use_fake_hardware:=true

To generate motion plans and execute them with a simulated 7 DoF Kinova Gen3 arm with mock hardware:

ros2 launch kinova_gen3_7dof_robotiq_2f_85_moveit_config robot.launch.py \
  robot_ip:=yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy \
  use_fake_hardware:=true

Alternatively, if you wish to use the Kinova Gen3's 6 DoF variant:

ros2 launch kortex_bringup gen3.launch.py \
  robot_ip:=yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy \
  use_fake_hardware:=true \
  dof:=6

and to bring up the Kinova Gen3 6 DoF with MoveIt:

ros2 launch kinova_gen3_6dof_robotiq_2f_85_moveit_config robot.launch.py \
  robot_ip:=yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy \
  use_fake_hardware:=true

Alternatively, if you wish to use the Kinova Gen3_lite's 6 DoF variant:

ros2 launch kortex_bringup gen3.launch.py \
  robot_ip:=yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy \
  use_fake_hardware:=true \
  robot_type:=gen3_lite \
  gripper:=gen3_lite_2f \
  dof:=6

To simulate the 7dof Kinova Gen3 robot with ignition run the following:

ros2 launch kortex_bringup kortex_sim_control.launch.py \
  dof:=7 \
  use_sim_time:=true \
  launch_rviz:=false

and to use MoveIt to command the robot:

ros2 launch kinova_gen3_7dof_robotiq_2f_85_moveit_config sim.launch.py \
  use_sim_time:=true

To work with a physical robot and generate/execute paths with MoveIt run the following:

ros2 launch kinova_gen3_7dof_robotiq_2f_85_moveit_config robot.launch.py \
  robot_ip:=192.168.1.10

Note: If you have reassigned your physical arm's robot IP address, then you will need to assign that ip address to robot_ip

You can command the arm by publishing Joint Trajectory messages directly to the joint trajectory controller:

ros2 topic pub /joint_trajectory_controller/joint_trajectory trajectory_msgs/JointTrajectory "{
  joint_names: [joint_1, joint_2, joint_3, joint_4, joint_5, joint_6, joint_7],
  points: [
    { positions: [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], time_from_start: { sec: 10 } },
  ]
}" -1

You can also command the arm using Twist messages. Before doing so, you must active the twist_controller and deactivate the joint_trajectory_controller:

ros2 service call /controller_manager/switch_controller controller_manager_msgs/srv/SwitchController "{
  activate_controllers: [twist_controller],
  deactivate_controllers: [joint_trajectory_controller],
  strictness: 1,
  activate_asap: true,
}"

Note: the required interface for the twist_controller does not currently exist in the gazebo or mock hardware simulation setups. So the twist_controller is currently only functional on Kinova hardware.

Once the twist_controller is activated, You can publish Twist messages on the /twist_controller/commands topic to command the arm.

For example, you can jog the arm using Teleop Twist Keyboard with the following command:

WARNING: you are responsible for collision checking, including self collisions when in this mode.

ros2 run teleop_twist_keyboard teleop_twist_keyboard --ros-args --remap /cmd_vel:=/twist_controller/commands

If you wish to use the joint_trajectory_controller again to command the arm using JointTrajectory messages, run the following:

ros2 service call /controller_manager/switch_controller controller_manager_msgs/srv/SwitchController "{
  activate_controllers: [joint_trajectory_controller],
  deactivate_controllers: [twist_controller],
  strictness: 1,
  activate_asap: true,
}"

The Robotiq 2f 85 Gripper will be available on the Action topic:

/robotiq_gripper_controller/gripper_cmd

You can test the gripper by calling the Action server with the following command and setting the desired position of thr gripper (0.0=open, 0.8=close)

ros2 action send_goal /robotiq_gripper_controller/gripper_cmd control_msgs/action/GripperCommand "{command:{position: 0.0, max_effort: 100.0}}"

Contents

The following is a description of the packages included in this repository.

kortex_description

This package contains the URDF (Unified Robot Description Format), STL and configuration files for the Kortex-compatible robots. For more details, please consult the README from the package subdirectory.

kortex_driver

This package implements a ROS node that allows communication between a node and a Kinova Gen3 or Gen3 lite robot. For more details, please consult the README from the package subdirectory.

kortex_moveit_config

This metapackage contains the auto-generated MoveIt! files to use the Kinova Gen3 and Gen3 lite arms with the MoveIt! motion planning framework. For more details, please consult the README from the package subdirectory.