The ROS-I robot support packages are a new convention followed for industrial robots. The aim of these support packages are to standardize the ways of maintaining ROS packages for a wide variety of industrial robot types of different vendors. Because of a standardized way of keeping files inside support packages, we don't have any confusion in accessing the files inside it. We can demonstrate a support package of an ABB robot and can see the folders and files and its uses.

We have already cloned the ABB robot packages and inside this folder we can see three support packages that support three variety of ABB robots. Here we are taking the ABB IRB 2,400 model support package: abb_irb2400_support. This is the support package of the ABB industrial robot model called IRB 2400. The following list shows the folders and files inside this package:

• config: As the name of the folder, this contains the configuration files of joint names, RViz configuration, and robot model specific configuration
• joint_names_irb2400: Inside the config folder, there is a configuration file, which contains the joint names of the robot
  which is used by the ROS controller.
• launch: This folder contains the launch file definitions of this robot.
  These files are following a common convention in all industrial robots.
  • load_irb2400.launch: This file simply loads robot_description on the parameter server. According to the complexity of the robot
    the number of xacro files can be increased. This file loads all xacro in a single launch file. Instead of writing separate code for adding robot_description in other launch files, we can simply include
    this launch file.
  • test_irb2400.launch: This launch file can visualize the loaded URDF. We can inspect and verify the URDF in RViz. This launch file includes the preceding launch files and starts joint_state_publisher and robot_state_publisher nodes, which helps to interact with the user on RViz. This will work without the need for real hardware.
  • robot_state_visualize_irb2400.launch: This launch file visualizes the current state of the real robot by running nodes from the ROS-Industrial driver package with appropriate parameters. The current state of the robot is visualized by running RViz and the robot_state_publisher node. This launch file needs a real robot or simulation interface. One of the main arguments provided along with this launch file is the IP address of the industrial controller. Also note that the controller should run a ROS-Industrial server node.
  • robot_interface_download_irb2400.launch: This launch file starts bi-directional communication with the industrial robot controller to ROS and vice versa. There are industrial robot client nodes for reporting the state of robot (robot_state node) and subscribing the joint command topic and issuing the joint position to the controller (joint_trajectory node). This launch file also requires access to the simulation or real robot controller and needs to mention the IP address of the industrial controllers. The controller should run the ROS-Industrial server programs too.
• urdf: This folder contains the set of standardized xacro files of the
  robot model:
  • irb2400_macro.xacro: This is the xacro definition of a specific robot. It is not a complete URDF, but it's a macro definition of the manipulator section. We can include this file inside another file and create an instance of this macro.
  • irb2400.xacro: This is the top level xacro file, which creates an instance of the macro, which is discussed in the preceding section. This file doesn't include any other files other than the macro of the robot. This xacro file will be loading inside the load_irb2400.launch file that we have already discussed.
  • irb2400.urdf: This is the URDF generated from the preceding xacro file using the xacro tool. This file is used when the tools
    or packages can't load xacro directly. This is the top-level URDF
    for this robot
• meshes: This contains meshes for visualization and collision checking
• irb2400: This folder contains mesh files for a specific robot
• visual: This folder contains STL files used for visualization
• collision: This folder contains STL files used for collision checking
• tests: The folder contains the test launch file to test all the preceding
  launch files
• roslaunch_test.xml: This launch file tests all the launch files.