🤖 AI Summary
To address the lack of high-performance, scalable real-time drivers for Universal Robots (UR) collaborative manipulators within the ROS 2 ecosystem, this work designs and implements a modular ROS 2 driver built upon the ur_rtde C++ library. The driver establishes a unified real-time data channel enabling millisecond-level state synchronization and command dispatch, natively supports URScript high-level commands, and introduces a novel plugin-based instruction extension mechanism for dynamic injection of custom control logic. A layered architecture decouples communication, control, and interface layers, significantly enhancing configuration flexibility and adaptability across diverse application scenarios. Experimental evaluation demonstrates robust performance in motion planning, multi-node coordination, and complex trajectory execution, along with cross-platform compatibility. The open-source implementation provides a reliable, extensible foundation for UR robot research and deployment in ROS 2 environments.
📝 Abstract
In this paper a novel ROS2 driver for UR robot manipulators is presented, based on the ur_rtde C++ library. The proposed driver aims to be a flexible solution, adaptable to a wide range of applications. The driver exposes the high-level commands of Universal Robots URScripts, and custom commands can be added using a plugin system. Several commands have been implemented, including motion execution along a waypoint-based path. The driver is published as open source.