The Smart Arm Stack (sas) is a modular robotics software framework designed for rapid prototyping, testing, and deployment of robot control algorithms.

Links

See the website below for installation instructions and docker images.

Website: https://smartarmstack.github.io
API documentation: https://marinholab.github.io/sas_devel/index.html

Issues

For bug reports or issues in any of the packages, please use the following GitHub issue tracker:

https://github.com/MarinhoLab/sas_devel/issues

Main philosophy

The core philosophy of sas_devel is to separate application logic from ROS 2 communication using a client–server architecture. Developers interact through clients and servers, which handle all ROS 2 communication internally, eliminating the need to manually create publishers, subscribers, or services. This simplifies development and allows the same code to run seamlessly across hardware and simulation.

Client–Server

As a rule, each sas functionality is available via a public cpp header in the relevant package. The user of each functionality uses a client or server as applicable. For most client–server pairs, a pybind11 wrapper allows the same functionality in python.

Below, each package is listed. For more details, see the README.md in each package.

Base packages

Package	Summary
sas_core	Core C++ library providing fundamental functionality independent of ROS 2.
sas_common	Shared ROS 2 utilities and helper abstractions used across all packages.
sas_msgs	Wrapper package providing simplified or legacy-compatible ROS message definitions.
sas_conversions	Utilities for converting ROS 2 messages into primitive and DQ Robotics types.
sas_robot_driver	Framework for configuration-space robot control via ROS 2 client–server nodes.
sas_robot_kinematics	Framework for task-space (kinematic-level) robot monitoring and control.
sas_datalogger	Tools for logging and recording system data during experiments or execution.
sas_operator_side_receiver	Receives operator-side input data and exposes it as ROS 2 interfaces.
sas_patient_side_manager	Coordinates teleoperation by linking operator inputs with multiple robots.
sas_robot_kinematics_constrained_multiarm	Provides centralized kinematic control for multiple robots with constraints.

Specialized packages

Vendor packages provide concrete implementations of the sas_robot_driver interface for specific robot manufacturers or simulation environments.

Package	Summary
sas_robot_driver_ur	Client–server driver implementation for controlling Universal Robots (UR) manipulators.
sas_robot_driver_kuka	Client–server driver implementation for controlling KUKA robotic manipulators.
sas_robot_driver_coppeliasim	Client–server driver implementation for CoppeliaSim simulation.
sas_robot_driver_gazebo	Client–server driver implementation for Gazebo simulation.

Templates

Packages to clone as a template and edit to your needs. They include simulation and hardware examples. Videos only render on the website or GitHub, not in these doxygen docs.

Package	Summary
sas_kuka_control_template	Template package for controlling KUKA robots using the sas_robot_driver_kuka interface.
sas_ur_control_template	Template package for controlling UR robots using the sas_robot_driver_ur interface.

Base docker images

dqrobotics: https://github.com/dqrobotics/container
ros: https://github.com/marinholab/ros
gazebo: https://github.com/marinholab/gazebo

Developer links

PPA and docker: https://github.com/SmartArmStack/smart_arm_stack_ROS2
website devel: https://github.com/SmartArmStack/SmartArmStack.github.io