Robotics StackExchange | Archived questions

Gazebo/SDF (vs URDF) and MoveIt/PlanningScene

Hello Gazebo developers and users,

I'd much appreciate your thoughts on how to solve the following issue:

Context:
Robotics lab with multiple ROSified industrial robots that is simulated in Gazebo. Currently, each robot is modeled as .xacro (by xacro), which is converted to .urdf that in turn becomes an .sdf (through gzsdf). The relevant inventory in the lab is modeled as multiple .sdf models (using .dae meshes). SDFs <include> feature is used to combine "ground" .sdf models into larger ones, i.e. a camera SDF together with a camera holder SDF. This is also done in order to attach different items to the robot (cameras, grippers, etc). Finally, a .world file brings together a couple of independent, i.e. not connected by joints, models to make up the whole lab.

This works out quite well, e.g. to change the current gripper I only have to modify one of the "composition" .sdf files - I have a hierarchical set of models that is easy to maintain and adjust to a changed situation in the lab.

Solved issues:

Open issue:

To recap: How can we achieve a better integration in different parts (here: Visual and collision models for Gazebo, Rviz and MoveIt) of ROS?

NOTE: I will cross-post this to the moveit mailing list (moveit-users at googlegroups dot com).
Update: here is the post and discussion

Kind regards, ahb

Asked by ahb on 2014-03-31 10:23:20 UTC

Comments

Answers

The three bullet points under moveit integration can be addressed by sticking to URDF + xacro. You can have a URDF for each model, and xacro to configure the URDFs differently. The URDF files can be loaded into Gazebo and into ROS for use with MoveIt.

I don't know much about moveit planning scenes. Can they be generated from sensor data, does it require URDF, or is it a special format?

Could you explaing your last bullet point "What to push to TF..."? I'm not sure what your question is.

Asked by nkoenig on 2014-04-01 16:05:42 UTC

Comments