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My understanding is that you are calculating the robot's movements when a constant speed is applied, using a unicycle model. The short answer is therefore "yes, you need to publish a tf::TransformBroadcaster in order to keep track of the robot's position".

The long answer depends on what your goal is. If you are writing a driver for a robot that reads the odometry and the velocity commands and outputs the current position, then you probably need to read this data from the hardware (wheel encorders?). If you are writing a simple simulator then this is the right path to go.

If you are familiar with Player/Stage, then here is an example of player-ros bridge that deals with transformations and publishes odometry.

Could you please describe the problems you are having, if any?