SCARA ROS2 EtherCAT Workshop

The ros2_control framework is a real-time control framework designed for general robotics applications that is gaining increasing attention for both research and industrial purposes.

This comprehensive tutorial teaches the basic concepts of controlling a robot using ros2_control and EtherCAT.

📚 Documentation

Full documentation is available at: https://icube-robotics.github.io/ecat_ros2_workshop/

📖 Tutorial Contents

• ros2_control Overview
• Write a URDF description of a SCARA manipulator
• Launch and interact with the SCARA robot
• Write a custom hardware interface
• Write a custom controller
• Set up Gazebo simulation
• Control EtherCAT motor drives

🚀 Quick Start

Required setup: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and ROS2 Jazzy

Installation

1. Install ROS2 Jazzy (installation guide)

2. Source your ROS2 environment:

   source /opt/ros/jazzy/setup.bash

3. Install colcon:

   sudo apt install python3-colcon-common-extensions

4. Create and build workspace:

   mkdir -p ~/ros2_ws/src
   cd ~/ros2_ws
   git clone https://github.com/ICube-Robotics/ecat_ros2_workshop.git src/ecat_ros2_workshop
   rosdep install --ignore-src --from-paths . -y -r
   colcon build --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release --symlink-install
   source install/setup.bash

Docker Setup (Alternative)

For a containerized environment, see the Docker setup guide.

docker build --tag ecat_ros2_workshop:jazzy --file .docker/Dockerfile .
docker run ecat_ros2_workshop:jazzy ros2 launch scara_bringup scara.launch.py

📦 Repository Structure

ecat_ros2_workshop/
├── scara_description/      # URDF and robot description files
├── scara_hardware/         # Custom hardware interface implementation
├── scara_controllers/      # Custom controller implementation
├── scara_bringup/         # Launch files and configurations
├── scara_nodes/           # Additional ROS2 nodes
├── docs/                  # MkDocs documentation source
└── resources/             # Tutorial resources and images

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

For bugs and feature requests, please open an issue on GitHub.

📄 License

This project is open source. See the LICENSE file for details.

👥 Contacts & Maintainers

ICube Laboratory

University of Strasbourg, France

Manuel Yguel - [email protected] | @yguel

Asterion Robotics

Maciej Bednarczyk - [email protected] | @mcbed

For more information, see the full contacts page.

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Made with ❤️ by ICube Laboratory and Asterion Robotics