UR5 Complete Setup Guide

Author: Long Qian

Date: 2016-09-05

Overview

This tutorial demonstrates how to setup the interface between UR5 robot and a PC, so that the PC can control the UR5. I found the tutorials online are overwhelming complicated, and not well organized. The steps should be as easy and clear as this one.

Hardware

You need a UR5 robot, a PC, and an ethernet cable.

Software

• On UR5 side, PolyScope provides the interface to transfer data through TCP/IP, and to control the robot.
• On PC side, any program runs TCP/IP service is fine. Matlab is used in this guide.

Steps

1. Unpack the UR5 and mount it properly. Please refer to UR5 manual.

2. Plug in the power, and initialize the robot according to the instructions displayed on screen, also see the manual.

3. Setup UR5 network:

   • Navigate to Setup Robot / Setup Network
   • Check Static Address
   • Input a reasonable IP address, e.g. 172.22.22.2
   • Input Netmask as 255.255.255.0, Gateway and DNS server as 0.0.0.0

4. Install Matlab on PC, including Instrument Control Toolbox, which provides simple TCP/IP interface

5. Setup PC network:

   • Choose static IP address, e.g 172.22.22.1
   • Input Netmask as 255.255.255.0, Gateway and DNS server as 0.0.0.0. On Ubuntu, the setting looks like this.
     

6. Connect the UR5 and PC using an Ethernet cable

7. Upload PolyScope client program

   • Prepare a USB stick
   • Download UR Magic file that uploads PolyScope programs on your USB stick to the UR5 controller: urmagic_upload_programs.sh. You can also find a copy of it in urmagic/urmagic_upload_programs.sh
   • Copy the polyscope folder to the USB stick
   • Plug the USB stick into the teach pendant of UR5, follow the instructions

8. Launch Matlab and navigate to example folder.

9. Run ur5_setup_example.m. You can try out different joint configuration.

10. Done!

Notes

• If your PC has only one Ethernet port, and you would like to connect to UR5 and Internet at same time, then you have several choices:
  1. Purchase an Ethernet-to-USB adapter, and plug one of the Etherent cable in the USB slot.
  2. Purchase a network switch, and connect both UR5 and PC to the switch.
  3. Purchase and install another Ethernet card on your PC.
• This setup is mainly used for educational purposes.
• Thanks to Noah Cowan and Fereshteh Aalamifar for their initial work.