Overview

SmartManipulator-X is a robot arm project. It combines the ROS 2 control and operator-software concepts of ROBOTIS OpenMANIPULATOR-X with the mechanical design of BCN3D Moveo. A Microchip SmartFusion2 controller drives the stepper motors of the Moveo joints and a hobby servo on the gripper, and presents them to the ROS 2 host as virtual DYNAMIXEL devices over Protocol 2.0.

This documentation covers the Operator PC: the computer on which the operator plans motions and watches the arm. The whole system — the Robot PC, the controller firmware, the hardware and the mechanics — is documented on the SmartManipulator-X system site, which is published from the Robot PC repository.

What the Operator PC does

Owns	Does not own
MoveIt 2 motion planning (move_group, OMPL, pick_ik)	The USB link to the SmartFusion2 controller (/dev/ttyACM0)
RViz2 with the MotionPlanning panel	ros2_control, the controllers and the hardware interface
The semantic robot description (SRDF), kinematics, planning limits, controller mapping	The robot description (URDF/Xacro and meshes) — it is consumed from the Robot PC repository
Its Docker image, Compose services and GUI setup	The motor drivers, the firmware, the power and the emergency stop
Simulation workflows (Gazebo: planned, not in this repository yet)

The Operator PC never talks to the motor controllers. It plans in MoveIt and sends the trajectories as FollowJointTrajectory actions over ROS 2 DDS to the Robot PC, which runs ros2_control:

SmartManipulator-X with the Operator PC in focus: trajectories go over ROS 2 DDS to the Robot PC, which drives the controller and the arm

System components

Component	Role	Platform
Operator PC (this repository)	Motion planning and visualization: MoveIt 2, RViz2; simulation later	ROS 2 Jazzy in Docker; DDS client of the Robot PC
Robot PC	Robot-side ROS 2 control: ros2_control, the ROBOTIS hardware interface and DynamixelSDK; owns the USB link to the controller	Ubuntu 24.04, ROS 2 Jazzy in Docker
Controller firmware	DYNAMIXEL Protocol 2.0 device: six stepper axes (IDs 1–6), the gripper servo (ID 7) and a controller device (ID 200)	Zephyr RTOS on the SmartFusion2 Cortex-M3
FPGA design	Pin routing of SPI and UART, CorePWM for the gripper servo	SmartFusion2 FPGA fabric
Drives	Six TMC5160 modules in motion-controller mode, MG996R gripper servo	24 V and 6 V supplies
Mechanics	Joints, links and printed parts	BCN3D Moveo

Repositories

Repository	Content	Documentation
sfs-smartmanipulator-x-operator	This repository: Operator PC image, MoveIt 2 configuration, RViz2 setup, this documentation	This site; the system view in Operator PC
sfs-smartmanipulator-x-robot	Robot PC image and ROS 2 workspace, the robot description generated from the Moveo CAD, the Fast DDS profile, the system documentation	Robot PC, BCN3D Moveo mechanics
SmartManipulator-X-Controller	Zephyr firmware of the SmartFusion2 and the motor tester GUI	Firmware, Motor tester GUI
SmartManipulator-X-Libero	FPGA design of the SmartFusion2	Hardware

The two computer repositories are checked out side by side. The Operator PC image build reads the robot description and the DDS profile from the Robot PC checkout (default path ../SmartManipulator-X-Robot-PC), see Docker image and Compose.

Joint contract

The Operator PC, the Robot PC and the real hardware use the same joint names. They are defined in smartmanipulator_x_description in the Robot PC repository; the Operator PC only refers to them.

Joint	Moveo axis	DYNAMIXEL ID (SmartFusion2)	MoveIt group	Controller
j1_base	J1 base	1	arm	arm_controller
j2_shoulder	J2 shoulder	2 and 3 (two mirrored motors)	arm	arm_controller
j3_elbow	J3 elbow	4	arm	arm_controller
j4_forearm_roll	J4 forearm roll	5	arm	arm_controller
j5_wrist	J5 wrist	6	arm	arm_controller
gripper	gripper servo	7	gripper	gripper_controller

The gripper linkage has mimic joints (gripper_idler_gear, gripper_pivot_*, gripper_finger_*) that follow gripper; they are neither planned nor commanded.

Current status

• Operator PC (this repository): ROS 2 Jazzy image with MoveIt 2, pick_ik and RViz2; move_group and RViz2 start with one Compose command, join smx_net, plan with OMPL and execute through the Robot PC's arm_controller and gripper_controller, with the Robot PC running mock hardware on the same computer.
• Robot model: generated from the BCN3D Moveo CAD in the Robot PC repository. Joint limits are still placeholders until measured on the real arm; the MoveIt joint limits of this repository are conservative placeholders as well.
• Real hardware: not reachable from the Operator PC yet — the Robot PC refuses use_mock_hardware:=false until its real-hardware ros2_control path is verified (see the Robot PC documentation).
• Open items: Gazebo simulation on the Operator PC, measured joint limits and velocities, two-host operation over real Ethernet, orientation goals with a 5-DOF-aware IK setting.