Use MoveIt Pro With Hardware

By default, MoveIt Pro is configured to use a simulation environment.

This guide will cover how to configure MoveIt Pro to be used with robot hardware.

Create a Robot Configuration Package

This is the most important step, since the configuration package contains the settings the robot driver uses to connect to the robot, such as the IP address of the robot controller.

Refer to Configuring MoveIt Pro for a Specific Robot for detailed instructions about creating a configuration package for a robot.

Setup your Robot

For UR e-Series robots, follow the instructions in the UR5e Hardware Setup Guide to connect the robot controller to the computer where you have installed MoveIt Pro. For other robots, similar steps will need to be taken.

Set Runtime Variables for Hardware

MoveIt Pro contains a .env file that sets a variety of environment variables.

The default location of this file is at ~/moveit_pro/.env.

When MoveIt Pro is installed, this file is initialized containing default values which configure MoveIt Pro to launch a simulated robot, from the ~/moveit_pro/moveit_studio_ur_ws workspace.

To allow controlling actual robot hardware, you will need to modify the values of some of these variables to start a real robot from your own robot configuration package:

STUDIO_HOST_USER_WORKSPACE : Change this to the workspace directory that contains your robot configs. See Configuring MoveIt Pro for a Specific Robot.
STUDIO_CONFIG_PACKAGE: Change this to the name of a configuration package that is specialized for your robot. This package should exist under STUDIO_HOST_USER_WORKSPACE.
MOCK_HARDWARE: Set this to false to tell MoveIt Pro to attempt to connect to an actual robot.

Run MoveIt Pro

After updating the environment variables, run MoveIt Pro:

cd $HOME/moveit_pro
./moveit_pro run