Can't initialize effort_controllers/JointPositionController with non-global robot_description parameter

asked 2016-11-30 16:35:43 -0500

piyushk gravatar image

Here's an outline of my problem:

  1. I have multiple robots in Gazebo with different URDF descriptions. Each robot is pushed into a namespace (/robot1/...), and each frame id is pre-pended with a prefix (robot1_....). Consequently, I have no robot_description param in the global namespace.
  2. libgazebo_ros_control (running inside Gazebo) initializes ControllerManager. Gazebo runs in the global namespace.
  3. effort_controllers/JointPositionController (running inside Gazebo) calls urdf::Model::initParam which does not respect the controller's constructed namespace, and executes a searchParam in Gazebo's global namespace, which fails.

I can't figure out how to tell the controller to read the robot_description from robot1/robot_description.

Furthermore, It's unclear to me why the controller is trying to read the URDF independently in the first place. Why doesn't it get it from the controller manager?

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Comments

A guess, but: does the robotNamespace tag (in the urdf) influence this at all?

gvdhoorn gravatar image gvdhoorn  ( 2016-12-01 01:39:19 -0500 )edit

@gvdhoorn: Good suggestion. I'm using it already to ensure that gazebo_ros_control creates the controllers in the correct interface. But the NodeHandle is not passed to urdf::Model, so it doesn't solve the problem.

piyushk gravatar image piyushk  ( 2016-12-02 08:57:43 -0500 )edit

I've filed an issue report here: https://github.com/ros-controls/ros_c...

piyushk gravatar image piyushk  ( 2016-12-02 08:58:13 -0500 )edit
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