Industrial robots migration to gazebo-harmonic

[anishk85]

Hello,
I’d like to migrate a line follower world along with TurtleBot2/3 simulation to ROS 2 Jazzy + Gazebo Harmonic.

I’m new to Jazzy and Harmonic and thought this would be a good contribution. Before starting, I wanted to check if this migration aligns with the project’s roadmap and whether there are any preferences or guidelines I should follow.

Thanks!

[anishk85]

@javizqh

[jmplaza]

Hi @anishk85 ,

the migration to ROS2 Jazzy is not currently in the RoboticsAcademy (RA) roadmap (it will be in the near future, but not now). Before that we are migrating to Gazebo Harmonic (with ROS2 Humble), that is an active development topic. We have migrated several exercises, as you can see in the exercise status table.

Some JdeRobot developers are working on Amazon Warehouse and Follow Person exercises. A good contribution would be migrating the Pick&Place to ROS2 Humble + Gazebo Harmonic, including MoveIt2. But this is maybe not the best issue for a newcomer...

I suggest you can do betatesting on RoboticsAcademy, share here you solutions for some exercises in Gazebo Harmonic worlds and then study RA code and current open issues at RA repo. Maybe the extension of direct ROS2 support for many RA exercises is a good area for contributions.

Cheers,

[anishk85]

Hi @jmplaza ,

Thanks for the clarification and suggestions.

I understand the current focus is ROS 2 Humble + Gazebo Harmonic. I have some prior experience with MoveIt2 and have tested several MoveIt-related packages (including MoveIt Servo), so I think Pick & Place would be a good area for me to contribute.

My plan would be to approach this in phases:

1. Load and validate the robot model in Gazebo Harmonic
2. Set up ros2_control and verify joint-level execution
3. Integrate MoveIt2 planning and execution
4. Finally, integrate with the RoboticsAcademy web/exercise layer

I agree this is a complex task, but I believe a phased approach should keep it manageable. For this, it would be very helpful to have some guidance from someone familiar with the repository structure and existing Pick & Place setup. If there are any recommended starting points, design notes, or resources, I’d really appreciate them.

Thanks!

[jmplaza]

That plan sounds good to me. I would suggest you start betatesting and solving the current Pick&Place exercise at RoboticsAcademy (please share a demo video here of your solution working). It uses it Gazebo 11 and MoveIt2. Once you have solved it as user, then you can go on studying its underlying platform software.

In the process other JdeRobot members such as @Shu980101, @diegomrt and me may help you.

[anishk85]

Hey @jmplaza I got some issue running the pick and place one
rest line follower is working fine.

[Thread-3 (me] [INFO ] (my_app_logger) Error sending message: socket is already closed.

i believe due to this for pick and place my code on the gui is not able to connect to the backend and thus it wasn't able to execute the motion

i just wanted to know is there any fix exists for this because i have tried on this a lot or is this the issue exists from backend side

Screencast.from.12-22-2025.08.44.51.PM.webm

[javizqh]

This should not matter for the exercise execution because it does not have a WebGUI.
For the robot to move properly you need to have code.

If you suffer this problem with proper code, please report back

[anishk85]

Hi @javizqh ,
Thanks for the information the robot moved as per the code however the behaviour is quite weird like the yellow box is flying in air
also @jmplaza here is the working video of pick place attached so lets now migrate this to gazebo harmonic.

Screencast.from.12-23-2025.09.37.55.PM.webm

[javizqh]

That is normal, the exercise is in beta because of that type of behavior.

[jmplaza]

Hi @javizqh , Thanks for the information the robot moved as per the code however the behaviour is quite weird like the yellow box is flying in air also @jmplaza here is the working video of pick place attached so lets now migrate this to gazebo harmonic.

Screencast.from.12-23-2025.09.37.55.PM.webm

Good job @anishk85 !

Yes, let's go with migrating this robotics universe with UR industrial robot arm to Gazebo Harmonic. For now let's focus on achieving something similar outside RoboticsAcademy, just using ROS2 Humble, Gazebo Harmonic and (ideally) MoveIt2. Once it is running successfully outside RA we may focus on its integration into RoboticsInfrastructure (RI) and RoboticsAcademy.

@aleon2020 is also exploring in this line.

[anishk85]

Thanks! I’m fully on board with this approach 👍

I’d love to actively contribute to the migration to Gazebo Harmonic alongside you and @aleon2020. I agree that it would be ideal to first get everything working outside RoboticsAcademy, using ROS 2 Humble + Gazebo Harmonic + MoveIt 2, and only then move towards integration with RoboticsInfrastructure (RI) and RoboticsAcademy (RA).

From my side, I think a solid and structured path would be:

1. Start cleanly from the URDF/Xacro of the UR industrial arm
2. Integrate ros2_control with Gazebo Harmonic (controllers, transmissions)
3. Validate basic simulation, TFs, and joint control
4. Run MoveIt Setup Assistant and integrate MoveIt 2 planning + execution
5. Finally build up a simple pick-and-place pipeline to verify end-to-end functionality

Before diving in, could you or @aleon2020 share where things currently stand?

• If there’s already partial progress, I’m happy to align and build on top of it
• Otherwise, I’m also fine starting from scratch and iterating step by step together

[aleon2020]

Good evening @anishk85,

As my colleagues have mentioned, I'm currently starting to work on migrating the Pick and Place exercise to Gazebo Harmonic.

These first few days I've managed to get a simulation example of a standard robotic arm working on my machine, which has ROS2 Rolling and Gazebo Harmonic. Now that I've done that, @jmplaza has asked me to do the exact same thing, but with a UR5 industrial robot, which is the same one used in this exercise.

Unfortunately, I'm having several problems compiling these packages due to errors in some dependencies. Most of them use ROS2 Jazzy and Gazebo Harmonic.

Below are several links to some YouTube videos from which I have tried to get a simulation of the UR5 robotic arm working on my machine:

FIRST EXAMPLE
⦁ PART 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnuwTOB4DKw&list=WL&index=1&t=239s
⦁ PART 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9ELhToD4B8&list=WL&index=2
⦁ PART 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t28ENWHP0Lo&list=WL&index=3

SECOND EXAMPLE
⦁ PART 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUz2HDuI77E&list=WL&index=5
⦁ PART 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYNCQIMkWmE&list=WL&index=5

The 5-step plan you mentioned seems quite good and well-structured, and I think the two of us could easily carry it out.

Finally, regarding your question about current progress, I haven't yet uploaded any changes to either RoboticsInfrastructure (RI) or RoboticsAcademy (RA). So, if you'd like, you can create a branch in RoboticsInfrastructure (RI) called "pick-and-place-harmonic" and we can upload any new changes to that branch.

[anishk85]

@aleon2020 thanks for the reply.

Let’s start the UR5 simulation from scratch — beginning with the URDF, then setting up the ROS 2 ↔ Gazebo (gz) bridge, and moving on to the MoveIt Setup Assistant. I’ve worked with robotic arms earlier, so hopefully we shouldn’t run into major issues.

This is my second time shifting to Gazebo Harmonic, so there might be a few bumps along the way, but if we do face any issues, we can tackle them together step by step.

I’ll also be creating a new branch that contains only the pick-and-place package.

[anishk85]

Hey @aleon2020 I am done with the setup of ur5 with robotiq gripper ros2 control setup was done too now moving ahead to moveit2 setup that's the most complex part of the project the arm was moving in gazebo upon sending joints commands via cli through joint trajectory controller where should i put the codes and all the files as i am not authorized to create branch also if i fork i am not able to do via that so because the whole structure would be different

I was thinking to keep this as separate package not mixing with others.

[aleon2020]

Good evening @anishk85,

I just finished replicating on my machine the entire process shown in the three videos (FIRST EXAMPLE) that I attached the other day.

In my case, I was also able to visualize the UR5 in RViZ using the same clamp as you (robotiq).

However, the Gazebo part isn't working for me because it says it can't find the "gazebo_ros" package when I use Gazebo launchers (in which I only use RViZ, everything works perfectly). I've tried to fix it but haven't been able to, even though the code I have right now is exactly the same as in the videos.

If you'd like, you can send me your email address and I'll send you the current state of my workspace so you can see the complete structure I'm using to replicate this model on my machine (I can send it to you in a zip file so you can see everything in more detail).

And finally, I've attached the current structure of my workspace, so you can get an idea of ​​how I have it set up (OUTPUT.txt file).

OUTPUT.txt