Service Engineering (ICCLab & SPLab)

A Blog of the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences

Author: Dimitrios Dimopoulos

Third Robotics and ROS in Zürich Meetup

24. June 2019 / / 1 Comment

The third robotics and ROS in Zürich meetup was organized and hosted by ICCLab on June 19th 2019. There was a good turnout from representatives in both academia and industry, totaling about 25 people in attendance. For our third meetup we had two presentations: “Perception and action planning in complex environments with ROS” by Rastislav Marko and Martin Möller from F&P Personal Robotics and “Self-calibrating camera position and grasping with Niryo arm” by Dimitrios Dimopoulos from ICCLab, ZHAW.

Summary of presentation #1: Perception and action planning in complex environments with ROS by Marko Rastislav and Martin Möller from F&P Personal Robotics

Martin Möller opened the first talk with a brief introduction of the company and one of its collaborations with ZHAW in the past. Next an overview of the hardware components of P-Rob 2R was given. This robot lies at the heart of the company’s solutions, including Lio, a mobile service robot, which was the focus of the talk. Following that, myP, the core robot library with its accompanying graphical control interface, was presented in action and a quick look at its architecture and configuration was showcased. Finally, Martin mentioned the key sensor components used by the mobile service robot.

Martin Möller presenting some of the company’s robotic solutions
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Second Robotics and ROS in Zürich Meetup

16. May 2019 / / 0 Comments

The second robotics and ROS meetup in Zürich was organized by ICCLab and hosted by Dr. Romana Rust and Gonzalo Casas from Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zürich, on May 14th 2019. There was a good turnout from representatives in both academia and industry, totaling about 45 people in attendance. For this second meetup we had three presentations: “ROS for Digital Fabrication in Architecture”, “ROS Integration into Magic Leap” and “Next Generation Security” from Wecorp.

Summary of presentation #1: ROS for Digital Fabrication in Architecture by Dr. Romana Rust and Gonzalo Casas from ETH Gramazio Kohler Research group

Dr. Romana Rust opened the first talk by showcasing ongoing and past projects of the Gramazio Kohler Research group. Specifically she presented the usage of industrial grade robots and ROS in additive digital fabrication and the ways they allow for a novel approach in building non-standardized architectural components.

Dr. Romana Rust on digital fabrication
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Niryo Arm Motor Troubleshooting

24. April 2019 / / 0 Comments

In most development processes hiccups are unavoidable. Our grasping application using the Niryo One arm was no exception. During testing, we had two of our arms break down and with this post, we would like to share our experiences with debugging and resolving these issues.

As far as we can understand, the axis 6 motor (Dynamixel XL-320 model) in the first arm, which is responsible for turning the gripper around, was damaged due to the gripper hitting the table. Since the gripper does not have an applied force feedback shutdown procedure, one of the motors probably broke down from overloading. Note that there is no gripper URDF model provided and octomap integration into the project was not yet complete at the time, so the kinematics planner was not aware of the table’s existence. As for our second arm, the culprit was the power adapter. The Dynamixel XL-430 motors are rated for 11.1 Volts, but the adapter supplied is a 12V one, which can cause permanent damage due to overheating if the arm is operating for prolonged periods of time. This design oversight was amended in Niryo One models shipped after November 2018, but in any case, you should check the rating of the power adapter provided and request a replacement if needed.

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