February 19, 2021

Cell Commissioning

In a matter of days we were able to commission our latest cell, the Yaskawa Motoman GP8, using the foundations we had developed from the KUKA iiwa. Big kudos to @RobinEdwards. Below is a video showing a glimpse of the commissioning program we performed to validate the works. This work is part of a sub-project that has indirectly received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme via an Open Call issued and executed under project TRINITY (grant agreement No 825196).

February 1, 2021

Cell Installation

Despite delays due to shipping and freight restrictions the team managed to get our latest cell up and running before the end of January 2021. Below is a timelapse video showing the hard work of @DavidMason and @RobertBush getting the Yaskawa Motoman GP8, Yaskawa YRC1000micro, TylerBro plinth, KJN rexroth extrusions/ polycarbonate and Rittal control box installed. Negative covid tests were taken on the day of installation.

December 23, 2020

Prototype Demo

Today marks the end of prototype 2.0. To honour the KUKA iiwa we have released an open-source python-based ROS module on GitHub. The iiwapy module offers users of a KUKA iiwa a python API to control the robot using sunrise controller kinematics. In addition, here is a video demo of using the KUKA iiwa with a standard MoveIt! generated joint stream. We haven’t shared a video using the iiwapy module; instead we encourage users to try it.