Keeping the Franka Emika Panda alive: a ROS 2 stack with a reliable position interface

1. 05:00
   arXiv Robotics — research abstractsSignal

   Keeping the Franka Emika Panda alive: a ROS 2 stack with a reliable position interface

   This paper presents an open-source software stack that restores ROS 2 support for the Franka Emika Panda robot by addressing instability in its external position control interface. The authors identify vibrations and protective stops as resulting from timing mismatches and sampling jitter, not inherent hardware limits. They introduce an asynchronous hardware interface to decouple real-time communication from the ROS 2 loop, a rate-matching mechanism for slower command sources, and a position-domain reference generation strategy. Experimental results show reliable velocity tracking with reduced motion artifacts compared to the official implementation. The stack was validated on two independent Panda platforms across motion planning, compliance control, position-controlled manipulation, and haptic teleoperation. Code and videos are available at https://sites.google.com/unisa.it/fer-ros2.

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