I have talked about controlling robot arms with 4 or 5 motors and the maths involved in turning a desired x,y,z target into servo angles. Things get a little too interesting with 6 motors as you end up with a great deal of solutions to a positioning problem and need to work out a 'best' choice.
So I finally got MoveIt! to work to control a six motor arm using ROS. I now also know that using MoveIt on lower order arms isn't going to give you much love. Six is the magic number (plus claw motor) to get things working and patience is your best friend in getting the configuration and software setup going.
This was great as MoveIt was the last corner of the ROS stack that I hadn't managed to get to work for me. The great part is that the knowledge I gained playing with MoveIt will work on larger more accurate and expensive robot arms.
