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QB Robotics SoftHand2 Research General Manual

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General Manual
PLEASE READ CAREFULLY THESE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE USE. DO NOT DISCARD: KEEP FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.
 

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Summary of Contents for QB Robotics SoftHand2 Research

  • Page 1 General Manual PLEASE READ CAREFULLY THESE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE USE. DO NOT DISCARD: KEEP FOR FUTURE REFERENCE.  ...
  • Page 2 Dear customer, Thank you for purchasing our product.           The present document provides information at best of our knowledge at the time of publication. This document could present differences from the product and it is subject to changes without notice: the latest version is available on our webpage www.qbrobotics.com.

  • Page 3: Table Of Contents

    6 Software ........................19 Configuration GUI C++ API library 7 Maintenance and warranty..................38 General 8 FAQ and troubleshooting ...................39 PC drivers and requirements Simplified CAD models of the qb SoftHand2 Research The glove is deteriorated/broken The hand does not reopen correctly...
  • Page 4 The USB flash drive is not working...

  • Page 5: Preface

    QBSOFTHAND2 RESEARCH USER MANUAL  —  5   1 Preface 1.1 Using this document The documentation must always be complete and in a perfectly readable state. Keep the document accessible to the operating and, if necessary, maintenance personnel at all times. Pass the document to any subsequent owner or user of the product. 1.2 Symbols and conventions STYLE DESCRIPTION...

  • Page 6: Kit Content

    Identifies the required tool to be used during the described assembly phase. Identifies file paths, file names and software functions. Monospaced text 1.3 Kit content The kit consists of: • N.1 qb SoftHand2 Research 24 V; • N.1 ISO 9409-1-50-4-M6 flange adapter; • N.1 3m main cable; •...

  • Page 7: Safety

    QBSOFTHAND2 RESEARCH USER MANUAL  —  3   2 Safety 2.1 Intended use The product design is intended for grasping and manipulating objects in the weight range from 1 to 1700 Fragile, sharp or sharp-edged objects shall not be grasped. Objects having the ratio between the biggest and the smallest dimensions ≥8 mm and the main dimension greater than 300 mm shall not be grasped.

  • Page 8: Ec Directives On Product Safety

    Use close to a human's head, face and eye area; • Use as a climbing aid; • Use in outdoor applications. 2.5 Environmental safety The qb SoftHand2 Research must be disposed of in accordance with the applicable national laws, regulations and standards. GENERAL MANUAL  —  SEP 8, 2022 — RELEASE: V1.0.2...
  • Page 9 QBSOFTHAND2 RESEARCH USER MANUAL  —  5   All the components of this product have been chosen in accordance with the EU RoHS directive 2011/65/ EU: they are produced with restricted use of hazardous substances to protect the environment. Observe national registration requirements for importers according to EU WEEE Directive 2012/19/EU.  ...

  • Page 10: Technical Data

    6  —  TECHNICAL DATA 3 Technical data 3.1 Mechanical dimensions The figure below shows the overall dimensions of the qb SoftHand2 research, valid for both left and right configurations; distances and tolerances in the drawing are noted in millimeters  [mm]  degrees  [°] Figure 1. — qb SoftHand2 Research drawings  ...

  • Page 11: Center Of Mass

    Be aware that the above figure may be out of scale. 3.2 Center of Mass The following table gives also the position of the Center of Mass of the SoftHand2 Research and defines its Coordinate System, like depicted in the following schemes.

  • Page 12: Mechanical Characteristics

    8  —  TECHNICAL DATA Figure 2. — Robot Tool Coordinate System On the left, it is represented the mechanical interface coordinate system Σ ) of an articulated robot, as defined by ISO 9787:2013. In particular, the center of the coordinate system, O , is on the interface surface of the robot tool flange and the Z  axis is coincident with the tool flange axis of...

  • Page 13: Electrical Characteristics

    QBSOFTHAND2 RESEARCH USER MANUAL  —  9   For this SVG the export flag is not set!   3.4 Electrical characteristics MINIMUM NOMINAL MAXIMUM Power supply voltage [VDC] 23.1 24.8 Power consumption Current limit — Operational time — — Duty cycle — —...
  • Page 14 10  —  TECHNICAL DATA WIRE COLOR DESCRIPTION White RS485+ Brown RS485- Green — Yellow — Gray 24V *** Pink GND *** Blue 24V *** GND *** Figure 3. — User view   *** 24VDC and GND must be provided by an isolated Power Supply Unit. ...

  • Page 15: Description

    The combination of these innovations results in a plug-and-play, simple to control and affordable device. The custom-made electronic board inside the qb SoftHand2 Research is composed of a logic stage for communication and low-level computation, and a power stage for motion control. This, together with a DC motor and its absolute encoder, establishes a simple position and current control feedback regulated by a properly tuned PID controller.

  • Page 16: Characteristics And Key Features

    12  —  DESCRIPTION The qb SoftHand2 Research does not use Common Industrial Protocols (CIP) or other industrial standards for I/O communication due to historical design and technical reasons. I/O data basically refers as measurements from the device, commands to the device, and parameters from/to the device.

  • Page 17: Mounting And Wiring

    5 Mounting and wiring 5.1 Tool mounting The qb SoftHand2 Research kit allows you to connect the device to the robot arm. The device can be mounted on any robot equipped with a mounting interface ISO 9409-1. Use only the screws provided within the package. Longer screws could damage the robot or ...
  • Page 18 14  —  MOUNTING AND WIRING   INSTRUCTIONS Center (2) on the wrist diameter 63 mm,   taking care that the cylindrical pin (1) fits into one of the four d6 reamed through holes. Fasten (2) to the robot wrist by tightening  ...

  • Page 19: Cable Connections

    You need the 2 mm Allen wrench. 5.2 Cable connections To power and connect the qb SoftHand2 Research to UR robots' control box or a workstation computer, please follow the instructions in the table, using the provided kit. The following images include an external power supply kit (sold separately). If your robot's ...
  • Page 20 16  —  MOUNTING AND WIRING   INSTRUCTIONS Connect the main cable (C1) to the RS485-USB converter (B). Connect the main cable (C1) to a power supply unit (A) (Not connected to the power). If you have not required the external  power supply, the C1 cable has two unconnected red and grey ends.
  • Page 21 Be careful to insert the connector in the  correct direction. Do not rotate the M8 connector when inserted into the receptacle. Minimum curve radius of the cable (C1) = 51 mm. Table 1. — Installation guidelines of the SoftHand2 Research.
  • Page 22 18  —  MOUNTING AND WIRING YELLOW and GREEN wires on (C1) cable are optional. They are used to enable the button on  the qb SoftClaw wrist flange as a Digital Input for the robot on which the gripper is mounted. If your robot provides digital inputs, you can connect one of these wires (for example the yellow one) to a digital input port.

  • Page 23: Software

    6.1.2 Usage The qb SoftHand2 Research GUI (generally referred as qbtools) is a simple application to quickly test the basic functionalities of the device through a personal computer. It may be also useful to diagnose —...
  • Page 24 20  —  SOFTWARE Two devices connected to the same master PC must never have the same ID value.  Unexpected behaviors may happen otherwise. The button of the tab allow: • : Info about the current GUI. About • : upgrade the qbSoftHand2 Research firmware. Contact the support team for information Upgrade...
  • Page 25 QBSOFTHAND2 RESEARCH USER MANUAL  —  21   Basic tab Figure 5. — qb SoftHand2 Research GUI screen - basic tab The motors must be activated first to be able to send references to the them.  • : the three buttons ...
  • Page 26 22  —  SOFTWARE Advanced Control tab Figure 6. — qb SoftHand2 Research GUI screen - advanced control tab This tab is intended to give the user a better understanding of how the device works. • : It is possible to set the synergies to the device.

  • Page 27: Ros

    After that, don't forget to come back here and start having fun with our Nodes. Install the qb SoftHand2 Research packages for a ROS user is straightforward. Nonetheless it is necessary to pay attention to some steps when repositories are cloned.
  • Page 28 <ros-pkg> Device Setup Connect a qb SoftHand2 Research to your system is basically a matter of plugging in a USB cable. Nonetheless, read carefully the manual to understand all the requirements and advice about either single-device or chained configurations.
  • Page 29 QBSOFTHAND2 RESEARCH USER MANUAL  —  25    NOTE: In a single-device system the synchronous mode is a nonsense. Figure 7. — qb SoftHand ROS control mode schemes In both cases there is always one central Node which manages the shared resources for the serial communication (e.g.
  • Page 30 26  —  SOFTWARE Figure 8. — qb SoftHand ROS packages and classes overview   Communication Handler The Communication Handler Node has no parameters to be set, therefore it is always launched like this: roslaunch qb_device_driver communication_handler.launch On start, it scans the serial communication resources connected to your system and shows a list of the devices it has found.
  • Page 31 Control Modes For the sake of simplicity, we are going to cover all the control modes for a single qb SoftHand2 Research, but it is just a matter of putting things together and set the launch file parameters properly to control several devices together.
  • Page 32 [true] with other robots is better to set it apart). Be aware that the qb SoftHand2 Research is desensorized and therefore it is not possible to  know exactly the position of each finger: the screen visualization is just the result of an estimation of the closure value and may differ from the real configuration of your qb SoftHand (e.g.
  • Page 33 0 start_asap: false timeout: 0.0" The previous command can be executed only after launching the qb SoftHand2 Research node.  The previous command works with a device with ID 1. If a device with different id is used you ...
  • Page 34 Two sliders will appear in the GUI to control the synergies (or the motors, depending on the running controller) of the hand. Move the sliders to control the qb SoftHand2 Research. You can also vary the GENERAL MANUAL  —  SEP 8, 2022 — RELEASE: V1.0.2...
  • Page 35 (be sure that use_waypoints:=true roslaunch the opposite is not used). You won't see any control interface in this case but the use_controller_gui qb SoftHand2 Research should start moving according to the given trajectory, parsed from a yaml file located at...
  • Page 36 3. API Control If you need a complex (i.e. real) control application, e.g. the qb SoftHand2 Research is mounted on a robot which uses computer vision aid to grasp objects, the previous two control modes don't really help much.
  • Page 37 To help you in the best way we can, we are asking you to do the most suitable of the following steps: It is the first time you are holding a qb SoftHand2 Research, or the first time you are using ROS, or even both: it is always a pleasure for us to solve your problems, but please consider first to read again the instructions above and the ROS tutorials.

  • Page 38: C++ Api Library

    API library in "qbmove_communications.h" your project. Basic functions In most cases these are all the necessary functions to integrate the qb SoftHand2 Research within your system. • : retrieves all the serial ports connected to the int RS485ListPorts(char **serial_ports) system, returns their number, and fills the given argument with the connected serial port names;...
  • Page 39 QBSOFTHAND2 RESEARCH USER MANUAL  —  35   • int commGetMeasurements(comm_settings *file_descriptor, int device_id, short int : fills   with the position of the motor on the qb SoftHand2 with measurements[4]) "measurements" the given id, and returns 0 on success. • int commGetCurrents(comm_settings *file_descriptor, int device_id, short int : fills ...
  • Page 40 36  —  SOFTWARE CMake project setup In order to set up a CMake project, using the compiled files, that implements your own application, we suggest to create a new project that has a structure similar to the following: ├── include │ ├── qbrobotics_research_api │...
  • Page 41 To help you in the best way we can, we are asking you to do the most suitable of the following steps: It is the first time you are holding a qb SoftHand2 Research it is always a pleasure for us to solve your problems, but please consider first to read this guide carefully.

  • Page 42: Maintenance And Warranty

    38  —  MAINTENANCE AND WARRANTY 7 Maintenance and warranty 7.1 General Products of the company qbrobotics s.r.l. are produced using the most modern production methods and are subject of strict quality inspections. All information regarding our Warranty Policy can be found at this site.

  • Page 43: Faq And Troubleshooting

    QBSOFTHAND2 RESEARCH USER MANUAL  —  39   8 FAQ and troubleshooting For any issue not listed below, please contact our support team 8.1 PC drivers and requirements 8.1.1 OS requirements All the Long-Term Support (LTS) releases of the following OS that have not reached the End-Of-Life (EOL) term are officially supported.
  • Page 44 40  —  FAQ AND TROUBLESHOOTING However, if you have never set it up, you probably need to add your linux user to the group to dialout grant right access to the serial port resources. To do so, just open a terminal and execute the following command: sudo gpasswd -a <user_name>...

  • Page 45: Simplified Cad Models Of The Qb Softhand2 Research

    8.2 Simplified CAD models of the qb SoftHand2 Research 8.2.1 Problem Where can I find CAD models or simplified meshes of the qb SoftHand2 Research? http://www.mingw.org http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/make.htm...

  • Page 46: The Glove Is Deteriorated/Broken

    42  —  FAQ AND TROUBLESHOOTING 8.2.2 Solution We provides only simplified geometries of the qb SoftHand2 Research that you can find at our description repository (measures are expressed in millimeters). As additional information, the phalanges are made of a polyamide 6 reinforced with 30% glass fiber (discontinuously placed), with the following main properties: •...

  • Page 47: The Hand Does Not Reopen Correctly

    QBSOFTHAND2 RESEARCH USER MANUAL  —  43   In such a case you should raise a "Service Request" in our portal as soon as you notice the problem. We will do our best to ensure that this goes as quickly and as smoothly as possible. 8.4 The hand does not reopen correctly 8.4.1 Problem The hand does not fully open up after setting the 0% position command: i.e.
  • Page 48 44  —  FAQ AND TROUBLESHOOTING 8.5 The USB flash drive is not working 8.5.1 Problem It is not so common, but it may happen that any of the files provided through the USB flash drive is corrupted. 8.5.2 Solution You can find all the USB flash drive files in our download section at the bottom of the qb SoftHand2 Research page ...

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