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The issue is in your configuration.

First you use:

type: "position_controllers/JointPositionController"
joint: antenna_base_to_antenna

Which is a JointPositionController in the position_controllers package.

Then you state (emphasis mine):

Now I try to switch to a different type of controller, I change my urdf to VelocityJointInterface I change my antenna.yaml to velocity_controllers/JointTrajectoryController

That is a different controller (provided by the joint_trajectory_controller package) and it requires different parameters, one of which is the joints parameter (here).

You only have joint in your antenna.yaml, so you'll have to change it.

This is also clear from the error message in the console output you show:

[ERROR] [1553738576.470885508, 1298.720000000]: Could not find 'joints' parameter (namespace: /antenna_robot/antenna_sim_antenna_controller).

Please also note that joint_trajectory_controllers will require you to send FollowJointTrajectory goals. A single std_msgs/Float64 will no longer work.