An Architecture for Controlling the Barrett WAM Robot Using ROS and OROCOS

This paper deals with the development of an architecture for controlling the Barrett WAM robot by using the Robot Operating System (ROS) and the Open Robot Control Software (OROCOS) platforms. While a ROS package for using WAM with ROS is available from the robot manufacturer, it provides only position control. More advanced control methods such as force and impedance control are not available in this package. Also, those advanced controllers require hard real-time processing, which is not provided by ROS. By using OROCOS in a lower level layer, a hard real-time control system is made possible, enabling the implementation of advanced control methods in ROS while exposing an interface compatible with original ROS package from Barrett.