Summary

I use Moveit! and socket communication to send joint commands to my UR5e. Although the connection initially establishes successfully, it drops after a while, and I have to restart the UR packages

Issue details

With the teach pendant (TP) in remote mode, I establish socket communication with the robot and send commands via MoveIt!. However, the connection drops after a while, preventing the continuous transmission of commands until the UR packages are restarted.
I have set headless to true in teh launch file <arg name="headless_mode" default="true" doc="Automatically send URScript to robot to execute. On e-Series this does require the robot to be in 'remote-control' mode. With this, the URCap is not needed on the robot."/>

Steps to Reproduce

Set the teach pendant (TP) to remote mode.
Launch roslaunch ur_robot_driver ur5e_bringup.launch, I get the output

[ INFO] [1712951600.822167206]: Robot mode is now RUNNING
[ INFO] [1712951600.824217714]: Robot's safety mode is now NORMAL
[INFO] [1712951600.831808]: Loading controller: joint_state_controller
[INFO] [1712951600.849943]: Loading controller: forward_cartesian_traj_controller
[INFO] [1712951600.853748]: Loading controller: speed_scaling_state_controller
[INFO] [1712951600.867894]: Loading controller: pos_joint_traj_controller
[INFO] [1712951600.871950]: Loading controller: force_torque_sensor_controller
[INFO] [1712951600.905931]: Loading controller: joint_group_vel_controller
[INFO] [1712951600.909740]: Controller Spawner: Loaded controllers: pose_based_cartesian_traj_controller, scaled_pos_joint_traj_controller, joint_state_controller, speed_scaling_state_controller, force_torque_sensor_controller
[INFO] [1712951600.915689]: Controller Spawner: Loaded controllers: joint_based_cartesian_traj_controller, forward_cartesian_traj_controller, pos_joint_traj_controller, joint_group_vel_controller
[INFO] [1712951600.918094]: Started controllers: pose_based_cartesian_traj_controller, scaled_pos_joint_traj_controller, joint_state_controller, speed_scaling_state_controller, force_torque_sensor_controller

Launch roslaunch ur5e_moveit_config moveit_planning_execution.launch and roslaunch ur5e_moveit_config moveit_rviz.launch, respectively.
After a while, I observe that the interface running roslaunch ur_robot_driver ur5e_bringup.launch reports

[ERROR] [1712953299.523320658]: Sending data through socket failed.
[ERROR] [1712953314.468088268]: Can't accept new action goals. Controller is not running.

and I have to restart the programs

Expected Behavior

The program should run continuously without experiencing connection drops

Actual Behavior

The connection drops, and I have to restart the program

Kindly assist me with this issue

Relevant log output

No response

Accept Public visibility

[X] I agree to make this context public

Apr 12 '24 20:04 Yeesha-R

It would be beneficial to see more output. I guess, you see the Connection to reverse interface dropped. output.

Do you have a lot of load inside your control PC? On ROS 2 we mitigated this by enabling non-blocking read by default, that might be a good way to proceed for ROS 1, as well.

Nevertheless, you can also re-establish the connection by calling

rosservice call /ur_hardware_interface/resend_robot_program "{}"

This is only a workaround, hence I'm not going to close this issue, but it is probably a better alternative to restarting things.

Apr 16 '24 07:04 fmauch

Hi @fmauch , thank you for your reply. Yes, I see Connection to reverse interface dropped. I tried to run rosservice call /ur_hardware_interface/resend_robot_program "{}" as suggested, but it does not work. I always have to restart the terminals running the command

Apr 17 '24 21:04 Yeesha-R

Could you please elaborate on "but it doesn't work"?

Apr 18 '24 07:04 fmauch

@Yeesha-R coming back to my question: What does "but it doesn't work" mean? Do you get any output on either the shell where you make the service call or where the driver is running?

Jun 12 '24 08:06 fmauch

Thanks @fmauch. I got the issue resolved already.

Jun 13 '24 08:06 Yeesha-R