no robot visible in rviz for urdf tutorial

edit

Ok, so the idea was that this was fixed in the most recent commits to urdf_tutorial (see urdf_tutorial/commit/8e0df6bc).

Apparently, the CMakeLists.txt install statement removes the directory prefix and installs the files into the package's share directory (ie: $ROSDISTRO/share/urdf_tutorial). The recent commits make RViz expect its config to be in urdf_tutorials/urdf_tutorials. The consequence of this is that RViz cannot find the configuration file and substitutes some defaults (which result in what you are seeing).

Short term work-around: remove the second urdf_tutorial from the last line in display.launch, so it reads:

<node name="rviz" pkg="rviz" type="rviz" args="-d $(find urdf_tutorial)/urdf.rviz" required="true" />

Depending on how you installed the urdf_tutorial package, you might need to use sudo for this.

Long term solution: I've submitted a ticket to rectify this (again .. mea culpa): see urdf_tutorial/issues/6.

PS: the TF errors are ok for the 01-myfirst.urdf file: it doesn't have any joints.