Development of an enhanced and standardized interface for the JACO arm

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The JACO arm, designed and manufactured by Kinova inc. (Montréal, Canada), is a lightweight, technical assistance robot that can be fixed to a powered wheelchair, a workstation and to a table. An Application Programming Interface (API) is available to interface the arm and allow programmers to configure advanced parameters and integrate the robot to their own systems. Even though JACO's API represents a powerful tool to communicate information to and from the robotic manipulator, it can only be used for this unique device. The use of a standardized control and programming library is necessary to meet Kinova's market development plan. ROS (Robot Operating System) is a robust, modular and well-supported open-source library developed by Willow Garage. Currently, ROS is one, if not the most adopted software libraries and tools to help software developers create robot applications. Interfacing JACO with ROS would broaden the arm's capabilities, both for research and application purposes, in addition of opening Kinova's market. Therefore, the project consists of using ROS to interface JACO's low-level onboard modules, and then demonstrate how it can be used to expand JACO's capabilities. A team from IntRoLab, the Intelligent, Interactive, Integrated and Interdisciplinary Robot Lab Systems of the Université de Sherbrooke, will work with Kinova on this project. IntRoLab has adopted ROS as its robotic software environment for programming and interface intelligent capabilities on many different robotic platforms, and has the expertise to validate efficiently how and what ROS can provide to JACO. A standardized and enhanced interface like ROS will give JACO important capabilities and should result in increased sales around the world. The objective with this first collaboration between Kinova and IntRoLab is to be the start of a fruitful and rich partnership for significant scientific and technological innovations that will lead to better quality of life and significant social and economic benefit to Canada in the emerging market of interactive robotics.