Simplifying ROS2 controllers with a modular architecture for robot-agnostic reference generation

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Risi, Davide, Petrone, Vincenzo, Langella, Antonio, Pagliara, Lorenzo, Ferrentino, Enrico, Chiacchio, Pasquale
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Risi, Davide
Petrone, Vincenzo
Langella, Antonio
Pagliara, Lorenzo
Ferrentino, Enrico
Chiacchio, Pasquale
author_facet Risi, Davide
Petrone, Vincenzo
Langella, Antonio
Pagliara, Lorenzo
Ferrentino, Enrico
Chiacchio, Pasquale
contents This paper introduces a novel modular architecture for ROS2 that decouples the logic required to acquire, validate, and interpolate references from the control laws that track them. The design includes a dedicated component, named Reference Generator, that receives references, in the form of either single points or trajectories, from external nodes (e.g., planners), and writes single-point references at the controller's sampling period via the existing ros2_control chaining mechanism to downstream controllers. This separation removes duplicated reference-handling code from controllers and improves reusability across robot platforms. We implement two reference generators: one for handling joint-space references and one for Cartesian references, along with a set of new controllers (PD with gravity compensation, Cartesian pose, and admittance controllers) and validate the approach on simulated and real Universal Robots and Franka Emika manipulators. Results show that (i) references are tracked reliably in all tested scenarios, (ii) reference generators reduce duplicated reference-handling code across chained controllers to favor the construction and reuse of complex controller pipelines, and (iii) controller implementations remain focused only on control laws.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_08514
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Simplifying ROS2 controllers with a modular architecture for robot-agnostic reference generation
Risi, Davide
Petrone, Vincenzo
Langella, Antonio
Pagliara, Lorenzo
Ferrentino, Enrico
Chiacchio, Pasquale
Robotics
This paper introduces a novel modular architecture for ROS2 that decouples the logic required to acquire, validate, and interpolate references from the control laws that track them. The design includes a dedicated component, named Reference Generator, that receives references, in the form of either single points or trajectories, from external nodes (e.g., planners), and writes single-point references at the controller's sampling period via the existing ros2_control chaining mechanism to downstream controllers. This separation removes duplicated reference-handling code from controllers and improves reusability across robot platforms. We implement two reference generators: one for handling joint-space references and one for Cartesian references, along with a set of new controllers (PD with gravity compensation, Cartesian pose, and admittance controllers) and validate the approach on simulated and real Universal Robots and Franka Emika manipulators. Results show that (i) references are tracked reliably in all tested scenarios, (ii) reference generators reduce duplicated reference-handling code across chained controllers to favor the construction and reuse of complex controller pipelines, and (iii) controller implementations remain focused only on control laws.
title Simplifying ROS2 controllers with a modular architecture for robot-agnostic reference generation
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.08514