Tutorial: Setting up the Robotiq 2F 140 Gripper

Gripper Installation Guide

Product name: Robotiq 2F-140 adaptive gripper.

Product Reference site: https://robotiq.com/support/2f85-140-adaptive-robot-gripper

Tutorial Reference: http://wiki.ros.org/robotiq/Tutorials/Control%20of%20a%202-Finger%20Gripper%20using%20the%20Modbus%20RTU%20protocol%20%28ros%20kinetic%20and%20newer%20releases%29

Hardware Connection

Step 1 Make sure the gripper is properly secured and the jumpers are correctly installed.

Step 2 Connect the USB cable to your laptop

Step 3 Plug in the power supply (24V, 2A)

At this point you should see the red LED on the gripper steadily on.

Software Installation

Step 1 Driver Installation

Install the following dependencies: Modbus:

pip install pymodbus

EtherCAT soem library

sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-soem

In a separate folder, run the following command to clone the Robotiq master repo. Once cloned, checkout kinetic-devel branch.

git clone https://github.com/ros-industrial/robotiq.git
cd ros-industrial
git branch kinetic-devel
git checkout kinetic-devel
git pull origin kinetic-devel

After you've completed these steps, copy the robotiq_2f_gripper_control, robotiq_ethercat and robotiq_modbus_rtu folders from the git repo to your catkin_ws/src folder. Then run the following in the catkin_ws root directory:

catkin_make

Step 2 Configure Serial Port

First run the command below to give you control over the serial port:

usermod -a -G dialout YOURUSERNAME

Now you can run the following command to find out which port the controller is connected:

dmesg | grep tty

** Before moving on to Step 3, make sure the gripper is properly connected!!!**

Step 3 Run driver node

Prior to launching the driver, make sure roscore is already running. In a separate terminal, run the command below to launch the driver. "ttyUSB0" is the default device ID, but you should check it using Step 2

rosrun robotiq_2f_gripper_control Robotiq2FGripperRtuNode.py /dev/ttyUSB0

Now you should see the LED on the gripper turn The driver listens for messages on Robotiq2FGripperRobotOutput using the Robotiq2FGripper_robot_output msg type. The messages are interpreted and sent to the gripper accordingly. Run and read the following simple controller node to find out how the controlling works.

rosrun robotiq_2f_gripper_control Robotiq2FGripperSimpleController.py

Congrats! You've just finished configuring the Robotiq 2F-140 gripper. If you want to find further example about how to use the gripper, please reference this code