UR5e 20205501013.
Code: Simple Manipulator Control Tutorials: text and video (lower in the playlist)
On the hardware side, all UR e-series robots provide the same interface. It is documented in official UR documentation, a copy of which can be found in the code link above. The summary is that there are 3 options: sending a whole UR_script program, sending UR_script commands one by one, or using the RTDE interface. Since UR_script is limited in functionality and operating frequency, the only relevant interface is the RTDE interface.
On the client side (your computer), there are 4 different options for communicating via the RTDE interface. First, there is the official RTDE interface implementation, but it's not well documented and can be buggy because of it. The better option is the ur_rtde implementation of the RTDE interface. It's written in C++ and provides Python bindings via pybind. This is what is used in Simple Manipulator Control and it works consinstenly. Finally there are ROS1 and ROS2 drivers which are built upon the official RTDE interface implementation. There the underlying RTDE protocol communication over a TCP socket is wrapped with the appropriate ROS API.
To connect to the robot, one needs to know its IP address (can be set to manual on teacher pendant settings), and set the robot to remote control mode.
If one installs the ROS1 or ROS2 and the corresponding UR ROS drivers, one gets access to the packages like MoveIt and the rest of the ROS suite. Alternatively, Simple Manipulator Control offers a Docker image with all its dependencies installed, and access to the control loops defined in it. The details are documented in the links provided above.
OLD: Accesible at marius.{a,b,c,d}.control.lth.se, behind athans.
Named after on of the robots in Karel Čapek's play Rossum's Universal Robots.
Marius was (20220930) replaced with loaned robot from cognibotics.
Accesible at marius-vikarie.{a,b,c,d}.control.lth.se, behind athans.
Marius-vikarie has been returned to Cognibotics (thanks for the loan!) on 221014.