[ros-users] [Discourse.ros.org] [ROS-Industrial] Integration of 6-axis manipulator and 2-axis positioner (external axes)

[Thomas Lehmann via Discourse.ros.org]

@gavanderhoorn: both manipulator and positioner are integrated with a DX200 controller. Here is Eric Marcil's answer to a similar question:

> Yes, the same controller will support both the robot and the station.  Each one is considered a control group.
>
>So any example combining two robots is essentially the same as combining a robot with a station.  The only difference is that the station has less joints.
>
>If you look in the simple message structure there is a field for groupNo.  For your system:
>
>    0 = robot
>    1 = station
>
>If I remember correctly, there are two approaches. 
>
>You can send multiple messages for each group using SmBodyJointTrajPtFull
>Or you can send a single message with multiple group info using SmBodyJointTrajPtFullEx
>
>I believe that the second one is usually recommended if you are trying to coordinate the motion between both groups.

So I think our system is in deed setup as a multi-group system. It has actually not been delivered yet but we should have it up and running some time in March. So far, I have been running `moveit_planning_execution.launch sim:=true` to simulate the robot and that is when I've run into the above errors. So the question would also be whether the industrial robot simulator has multi-group capabilities since simulating the robot prior to execution is also required. 

I have not configured the `motoman_driver` but will look into that next.





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