Current robot state as CAD file / pointcloud
Hey all
I need to get the current state of the robot, including spatial description, as a CAD file or a pointcloud for further processing. Specifically, I need to get the complete 3D description of the complete URDF model, in the current state/joint configuration, in a format that PCL can use.
I am not really sure how to do this, but I can see a partial solution, and would appreciate your feedback.
- Load the URDF
- Use geometric_shapes to parse all links into bodies
- Do raytracing on all bodies to get a set of points for each body
- Collect the points for each body into one point cloud or CAD file.
The question is how to merge this into one output in 4.? Or if there's an easier/more efficient solution that I've missed?
Thanks.