solidworks urdf exporter and robot joint calibration
I'm working with groovy and a universal robots ur5 robot that mounted on shoulder mount in a custom work cell. I've been trying to configure it with the solidworks urdf exporter and I've been coming close but there are still some issues I am facing. I am able to get the robot exported and working properly in simulation with moveit / rviz and the collision model however when I connect it to the real robot the joints are miss-aligned with the model. The closest I've come is to setup the model so that the ur5 has all its joints at 0 degrees in the model then when I start the robot the model joints match the position of the real robot except I seem to have several joints that rotate the wrong direction. I think I must be missing something. Is there a way to calibrate the joints of the model to the physical robot? I've tried everything I could think of as far as aligning the origins in the model but to no avail. Hopefully someone here has similar experience and can give me some pointers. Thanks!
@Rob Farrell: have you considered using the ROS Industrial driver(s) and models for the UR5? See http://wiki.ros.org/universal_robot, be sure to check-out the hydro-devel branch as well.
I did start out using the groovy ROS-Industrial UR5 model but I had interest in making some changes to the model to include other components I have on my arm and in my work space so I turned to using the SW exporter. I was unaware that ROS-Industrial was now supporting hydro. Thanks I'll change to that branch.