These are instructions for a older version of Gripper. New version noetic is on the bottom.

Robotiq Gripper

The robotiq gripper is controlled over tcp with a regular network cable to the controller. You can set gripping force, speed etc.

You can use it either as a on/off gripper or move both fingers to a specific position, in incremental values in the interval (0-255), where 255 is completely closed.

Connections

Connect the gripper to the control box if not already connected.

The control box needs 24V provided externally, this is all setup inside the Mitsubishi robot control box.

From the controller, connect a ethernet cable from ETH0 to an available network port on your computer. The IP of the gripper is 192.168.0.11, so for the connection on you PC you can set e.g. 192.168.0.12

Make sure you can ping the controller before you continue.

ROS

ros-industrial provides communication classes and easy-to-use rosnodes to control the gripper from your application.

Get it from the official repository: Robotiq and ROS/Robotiq

quick installation

$ git clone https://github.com/ros-industrial/robotiq.git

make sure to checkout to the right branch (most likely the kinetic branch)

get the following dependencies.

$ sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-soem can-utils ros-kinetic-socketcan-interface
$ rosdep install robotiq_modbus_tcp

Quick test

(First terminal) run

$ rosrun robotiq_2f_gripper_control Robotiq2FGripperTcpNode.py 192.168.0.11

(Second terminal) run

$ rosrun robotiq_2f_gripper_control Robotiq2FGripperSimpleController.py

(Third terminal - optional) run

$ rosrun robotiq_2f_gripper_control Robotiq2FGripperStatusListener.py

In the controller (second terminal), first send "a" to active the gripper.

Then check close and open by sending "c" and "o".

More details can be found here

Getting help

The serial number of our gripper is: ?????. We have the modbus/tcp version of the control box. drivers and online documentation can be found at Robotiq's support site

Noetic Installation Instruction

1. https://github.com/TAMS-Group/robotiq put everything under ws/src
2. rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y && catkin_make
3. http://wiki.ros.org/robotiq/Tutorials/Control%20of%20a%202-Finger%20Gripper%20using%20the%20Modbus%20RTU%20protocol%20%28ros%20kinetic%20and%20newer%20releases%29