Hand-eye calibration and path planning for UR5 manipulator

The aim of this project was to let the UR5 manipulator pick the cube with a visual tag and drop it in a box also with a visual tag.

The project had three main components.

1. Hand-eye calibration
2. Forward & Inverse Kinematics
3. Path Planning

What we did? How?

1. Collected about 10 data pairs of the transformation from robot base to the gripper (hand) and from the camera to the tag.
2. Calculated the transformation from gripper to the camera.
3. Registered the cube and the box.
4. Calculated the inverse kinematics with the end effector (the gripper) at the position of cube.
5. Used Probability RoadMap Planning to generate a collision-free path from the current configuration to the one got from the last step.
6. Moved the UR5 to pick the cube and plan the path to the box.
7. Moved the UR5 to the box and release the cube.