Advanced Usage

Realtime control

For realtime control use the realTimeMove method.

gripper.realTimeMove(requestedPosition=100)

The realTimeMove method is designed to be called in a loop with a high frequency. It will move the gripper to the requested position with a speed that depends on the distance to the target position. This allows for a smooth and responsive control of the gripper.

Joystick CLI Feature

Position control

pyRobotiqGripper includes a command-line interface (CLI) tool for controlling the gripper using a joystick, gamepad or a mouse.

This CLI requires the all extra.

To use the Joystick CLI, run the following command:

pyrobotiqgripper-joystick

Note

By defaut the application will automatically detect the the port on which is connected the gripper. It expects that the gripper is connected to the PC via USB and that a joystick is also connected to the PC.

You can also check the available options:

pyrobotiqgripper-joystick --help

Here below is an example where the application is launched with mouse control and the gripper communication is done via Modbus RTU over TCP.

pyrobotiqgripper-joystick --connection-type "RTU_VIA_TCP" --tcp-host 10.0.0.153 --tcp-port 2000 --joystick-id -1 --verbose 1

Speed control (Push Pull control)

Push-pull control drives the gripper directly from two live input signals instead of a target position: a motion signal (open/close direction and speed) and a force signal (grip force), read at high frequency from a joystick, gamepad or mouse axis.

To use it from the CLI, pass --control-method push-pull:

pyrobotiqgripper-joystick --control-method push-pull

  • The motion axis (--motion-axis) controls direction and speed: pushing it one way closes the gripper, the other way opens it, and centered holds the current position. Speed follows the axis directly.

  • The force axis (--force-axis) controls grip force. Force ramps up or down gradually while the axis is held away from center, like squeezing a trigger, rather than jumping straight to a value.

  • Once the gripper grips an object (or reaches its target), pushing further in the same direction only re-engages the grip once the requested force or speed has increased meaningfully (--force-nudge-threshold / --speed-nudge-threshold, out of 255), so the fingers aren’t repeatedly driven into the object on every control-loop tick. Reversing direction releases immediately, without needing to cross either threshold.

Use --joystick-id -1 to control push-pull mode with the mouse instead of a joystick/gamepad; --deadzone then sets the mouse dead zone described above. Pass --verbose 1 to print the commanded speed/force/position on every call.

gripper.pushPullMove(pushPullMotionSignal=0.5, pushPullForceSignal=0.2)