ABOUT

Intelligent Flexible Robotics and Assembly Group

The IFRA (Intelligent Flexible Robotics and Assembly) Group is part of the Centre for Robotics and Assembly at Cranfield University.

IFRA Group pushes technical boundaries. At IFRA we provide high tech automation & assembly solutions, and we support smart manufacturing with Smart Industry technologies and solutions. Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) are a clear example. They can improve overall operations and throughput quality by adapting to real-time changes and situations, supporting and pushing the transition towards flexible, intelligent and responsive automation, which we continuously seek and support.

The IFRA Group undertakes innovative research to design, create and improve Intelligent, Responsive and Flexible automation & assembly solutions, and this series of GitHub repositories provide background information and resources of how these developments are supported.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

IFRA-Cranfield:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@IFRACranfield
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ifra-cranfield/

Centre for Robotics and Assembly:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cranfieldrobotics/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cranfieldunirobotics/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CranfieldRobotics
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cranfieldrobotics/
• Website: https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/centres/centre-for-robotics-and-assembly

IFRA_LinkAttacher Repository

The IFRA_LinkAttacher repository contains 2 different ROS2 packages, which enable the attachment of 2 different entity links in Gazebo. This attachment is done through a simple ROS2/Gazebo plugin, and can be used for many applications in a Gazebo simulation environment.

The plugin has been designed with the main purpose of simulating object pick and place tasks using Robot Manipulators in Gazebo. The link attachment/detachment feature is available through a ROS2 Service Server, which creates a temporary fixed joint between two links for the “ATTACH” request, and removes the previously generated joint for the “DETACH” service. Thanks to this functionality, objects can be easily attached to any end-effector and pick/place tasks can be simulated in Gazebo-ROS2.

DEVELOPMENT: For the design of the IFRA_LinkAttacher ROS2/Gazebo plugin, the design pattern of the working gazebo_ros_state ROS2 plugin has been followed. The code has been modified/adapted for the main purpose of this new plugin (ATTACH/DETACH links), following the Gazebo API documentation for gazebo::physics.

VIDEO: Pick and Place Task - ROS2 Gazebo Simulation (UR3 + Robotiq 2f-85)

INSTALLATION

Both packages in this repository have been developed, executed and tested in a Ubuntu 22.04 machine with ROS 2 Humble (the plugin has not been tested in other ROS2 distributions yet). It can be easily downloaded and installed by executing the following commands:

cd ~/dev_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/IFRA-Cranfield/IFRA_LinkAttacher.git
cd ~/dev_ws
colcon build

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