The current recommended workflow for controlling the real robot with ROS involves using the lab laptop as the ROS master and your personal laptop to send ROS commands, instead of directly running ROS master on your machine. This approach is considered preferable because installing a real-time Linux kernel is necessary to use libfranka, and the installation process might not be straightforward. The lab laptop Katana 067526 (referred to as the workstation here) already has this kernel installed. If you prefer reducing communication latency by eliminating the lab laptop as a ROS master and directly using your own machine as a workstation, you have the option to install the real-time kernel on your own machine. Instructions for this process can be found here:https://frankaemika.github.io/docs/installation_linux.html#setting-up-the-real-time-kernel.
1. Switch on the Franka
Press the power switch on the backside of the Control
2. Network setup:
Connection between the Control and the workstation:
The workstation’s network setting has already been configured, so you simply need to connect the workstation and the Control with an ethernet cable
Select network
Wired connection 1Open a browser, *Desk can be accessed via
https://172.16.0.2, although you will see a certificate warning in your browserUnlock joints
Activate FCI (make sure the operations mode is execution instead of programming. The status indicator should turn green when in execution mode)
*Desk is Franka Emika‘s web-based, intuitive and graphical programming and user interface
Connection between the workstation and your laptop over the same network (here we use the lab LAN TP-Link_2104)
1. On the workstation
Open the .bashrc file, change the ROS_IP to your current IP, make sure you connect to the same network the ROS master is connecting to
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://10.0.0.194:11311 export ROS_IP=your_ip
2. On your laptop
Open the .bashrc file, and add the following lines
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://10.0.0.194:11311 export ROS_IP=your_ip
⚠️ Please make sure the ROS master IP is correct as well. At the time of writing, the IP is 10.0.0.194
⚠️ To test if you have complete, bi-directional connectivity between the workstation and your laptop:
Run rostopic list to see if you get a list of all available topics without an error. And, to check if you can communicate with the ROS master, run rostopic echo /topic_name. If you can only see the topics list but can’t echo the topic, there might be a hostname resolution problem. To resolve this, add the ROS master to the /etc/hosts on your laptop (client). E.g.,
10.0.0.194 user-Katana-17-B12VGK
You can run hostname to get the hostname of ROS master
3. Switch off the Franka
First, shut down the system by clicking the option “shut-down” in the sidebar of
Desk. The safety locking system is activated, and Franka will shut down.Then, use the power switch on the back of the Control to disconnect Franka from the mains eletricity.
⚠️ Be aware: after using the switch to power the system off, please ensure to allow adequate waiting time (i.e. in the order of ~ 1 minute) before using it to power the system on again
Draft points:
The steps to use Franka emika and connect with ROS
Connect the machine running ROS master and the controller with an ethernet cable
go to 172.16.0.2 to go to Desk . (Desk account: username:
admin, pwd:VUsail@NU11), local workstation network configuration: https://frankaemika.github.io/docs/getting_started.html#linux-workstation-network-configurationand first unlock joints
and click activate FCI (at N/A)
how to build real time kernel (https://github.com/frankaemika/libfranka/issues/62 )
after building it, make sure the secure boot is disabled, see https://frankaemika.github.io/docs/troubleshooting.html#troubleshooting-realtime-kernel
The lab laptop Katana 067526 with rt kernel installed, username: sail, password: VUsail@NU11
Overview of the status indicators:
