Robot Operating System Cookbook

Creating a pick and place task

There are various ways in which we can perform pick and place tasks. For example, we could send the robot a predefined sequence of joint values directly, which will cause the robot to always perform the same predefined motion. In this case, we must always place the object in the same position. This method is called forward kinematics, because we have to know in advance the sequence of joint values,   in order to perform a certain trajectory.

Another method would be by using inverse kinematics (IK), without any vision feedback. In this case, we provide the robot with the pose (x, y, or z) where the object to pick is, and by doing some IK calculations, the robot will know which motions it needs to perform in order ...