Kinova Robotic Manipulators

Kinova robotic arms empower their users to reach their goals and innovate faster, being a versatile, modular, and scalable solution to modern problems. Kinova products are used in a broad range of applications, including: teleoperation, human-robot collaboration, simulation, testing, inspection, and vision-based picking. The Kinova Gen3 is powered by the Kinova Kortex API and available in different configurations: 6 or 7 DoF, with or without the vision module, and Robotiq gripper in option.

Kinova is rooted in augmentation of human capabilities; their robots are designed to be controlled by humans and to adapt to their specific working environment and conditions, not the other way around. Their robotic arm manipulators enable new robotic applications to optimize research capabilities across multiple industries. Researchers at more than 500 universities around the world rely on Kinova solutions for a wide range of tasks, from BCI control to humanoid manipulators.

The Kinova Gen3 and Gen2 Ultra lightweight robots are supported with MATLAB.

For Kinova Gen3 robots the Robotics System Toolbox Support Package for Manipulators enables connectivity and control of the robot and access to the Kinova vision module depth and color streams in MATLAB via the Image Acquisition Toolbox. The support package provides both a MATLAB MEX API and ROS API that uses Ethernet or Wi-Fi to communicate with the robot. For more information, see the support package documentation.

For Kinova Gen 2 robots a MATLAB^® wrapper on the Kinova Kortex API allows users to connect to the robots from within MATLAB, and query the status of robot components (fingers, arm joints, etc.), including properties such as position and velocity. Users can also send commands to control and move the robots. Additional details can be found on the GitHub repository for Gen2 robotic arms.