Hokuyo Laser Scanner not working in Gazebo using ROS Kinetic

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I am trying to use the Hokuyo Laser scanner on my mobile robot using ROS Kinetic and it does NOT detect any object in it's field of vision.

I added the following code snippet in my .xacro file

<joint name="hokuyo_joint" type="fixed">
<axis xyz="0 1 0" />
<origin xyz=".15 0 .1" rpy="0 0 0"/>
<parent link="chassis"/>
<child link="hokuyo"/>
</joint>

<!-- Hokuyo Laser -->
<link name="hokuyo">
<collision>
  <origin xyz="0 0 0" rpy="0 0 0"/>
  <geometry>
<box size="0.1 0.1 0.1"/>
  </geometry>
</collision>

<visual>
  <origin xyz="0 0 0" rpy="0 0 0"/>
  <geometry>
    <mesh filename="package://mybot_description/meshes/hokuyo.dae"/>
  </geometry>
</visual>

<inertial>
  <mass value="1e-5" />
  <origin xyz="0 0 0" rpy="0 0 0"/>
  <inertia ixx="1e-6" ixy="0" ixz="0" iyy="1e-6" iyz="0" izz="1e-6" />
</inertial>
</link>

and the following code snippet in my .gazebo file.

<!-- hokuyo -->
  <gazebo reference="hokuyo">
    <sensor type="gpu_ray" name="head_hokuyo_sensor">
      <pose>0 0 0 0 0 0</pose>
      <visualize>true</visualize>
      <update_rate>40</update_rate>
   <ray>
    <scan>
      <horizontal>
        <samples>720</samples>
        <resolution>1</resolution>
        <min_angle>-1.570796</min_angle>
        <max_angle>1.570796</max_angle>
      </horizontal>
    </scan>
    <range>
      <min>0.10</min>
      <max>30.0</max>
      <resolution>0.01</resolution>
    </range>
    <noise>
      <type>gaussian</type>
      <!-- Noise parameters based on published spec for Hokuyo laser
           achieving "+-30mm" accuracy at range < 10m.  A mean of 0.0m and
           stddev of 0.01m will put 99.7% of samples within 0.03m of the true
           reading. -->
      <mean>0.0</mean>
      <stddev>0.01</stddev>
    </noise>
  </ray>
  <plugin name="gazebo_ros_head_hokuyo_controller" filename="libgazebo_ros_gpu_laser.so">
    <topicName>/mybot/laser/scan</topicName>
    <frameName>hokuyo</frameName>
  </plugin>
</sensor>
</gazebo>

I have created a hokuyo.dae file as well. I will post that if needed, however the issue is that the laser scanner is not detecting any object in it's field of vision. Where is the problem?

The following picture says it all.