SwRI releases CAD-based toolkit for robotics development

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Ease of use continues to be an ongoing challenge for robotics developers and users. And the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is looking to do its part with a new toolkit that aims to simplify programming robots.

The SwRI Workbench for Offline Robotics Development (SWORD) embeds computer-aided design (CAD) into robotics motion planning, modeling and execution. And SwRI said it features a graphical interface to demystify the fundamental coding required in robot operating system (ROS) application development.

Informed by the Institute’s role in supporting the ROS-Industrial community, SwRI developed SWORD so manufacturing engineers can leverage CAD knowledge to unlock more complex capabilities within the ROS codebase.

SwRI manages the ROS-Industrial Americas Consortium and supports ROS-I software repositories, executing training and developer events. SwRI said SWORD is a plugin for FreeCAD that integrates robotics capabilities into a familiar, cross-platform environment.

“The traditional ROS workflow is programming-intense, requiring developers to be deeply familiar with available ROS libraries and tools. Even experienced ROS developers can spend significant time on initial setup and configuration,” said Matt Robinson, a SwRI engineer who manages the ROS-Industrial Americas Consortium. “We listened to ROS experts and consortium members to develop SWORD to provide easier access to the ROS motion-planning tools, while sticking to a CAD-based environment that non-developers are familiar with.”

SWORD features a graphical toolkit for setting up motion planning environments and collision geometries. It can also test advanced robotic motion-planning applications.

SwRI said it provides a graphical interface to many powerful motion-planning libraries. The goal is to adapt ROS for manufacturing and industrial audiences in a way that is more approachable in a familiar environment.

“SWORD is designed for both robotics developers and manufacturing engineers familiar with CAD processes and programs on process-oriented systems,” said Jeremy Zoss, an SwRI engineer who helped to develop the software. “SWORD brings advanced motion-planning capability to this audience, allowing them to take advantage of these advanced tools in their operational environments.”

SWORD features include:

• Environmental modeling: create or import a CAD model of your robot, including fixtures and end-of-arm-tooling. Manipulate and control the robot model using joint sliders and simulate tool movement with a dragger to evaluate and calculate joint configurations.
• Robot manipulation and planning: generate motion plans using commercial path planners, creating custom pipelines for application-specific behavior while predicting and avoiding collisions.
• Custom planning pipeline: define robot motion using either coordinate-based or joint waypoints, specifying different movement segment types and motion groups while inserting supplementary commands.

SWORD is officially released and seats are available. A trial version is also available upon request. To see a demonstration of ROS May 6-9 at Automate, visit SwRI at booth No. 3543.