The first example that we are going to see is random motion planning using MoveIt! C++ APIs. You will get the code named test_random.cpp from the src folder. The code and the description of each line follows. When we execute this node, it will plan a random path and execute it:

//MoveIt! header file
#include <moveit/move_group_interface/move_group.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
  ros::init(argc, argv, "test_random_node",
   ros::init_options::AnonymousName);
  // start a ROS spinning thread
  ros::AsyncSpinner spinner(1);
  spinner.start();
  // this connects to a running instance of the move_group node
  // Here the Planning group is "arm"
  move_group_interface::MoveGroup group("arm");
  // specify that our target will be a random one
  group.setRandomTarget();
  // plan the motion and then move the group to the sampled target
  group.move();
  ros::waitForShutdown();
}

To build the source code, we should add the following lines of code to CMakeLists.txt. You will get the complete CMakeLists.txt file from the existing package itself:

add_executable(test_random_node src/test_random.cpp)
add_dependencies(test_random_node
 seven_dof_arm_test_generate_messages_cpp)
target_link_libraries(test_random_node
${catkin_LIBRARIES} )

We can build the package using the catkin_make command. Check whether
test_random.cpp is built properly or not. If the code is built properly, we can
start testing the code.

The following command will start the RViz with 7-DOF arm with motion planning plugin:

$ roslaunch seven_dof_arm_config demo.launch

Move the end-effector to check whether everything is working properly in RViz.

Run the C++ node for planning to a random position using the following command:

$ rosrun seven_dof_arm_test test_random_node

The output of RViz is shown next. The arm will select a random position that has a valid IK and motion plan from the current position: