MoveIt! with Gazebo, using MoveItSimpleControllerManager, joint_trajectory_controller

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Hi,

I am trying to use MoveIt! to control a simulated robot in Gazebo, and am at a loss as to how to proceed. The only documentation / tutorial I can find on the subject is this one, which is 4 years old and works only for a specific robot, that comes with all the necessary controllers.

My understanding so far:

• The MoveItSimpleControllerManager plugin should 'convert' MoveIt! executions to FollowJointTrajectory action calls. I have included the plugin in myrobot_moveit_controller_manager.launch (adapted from the demo.launch generated by the MoveIt! setup assistant) with:

  <!-- Set the param that trajectory_execution_manager needs to find the controller plugin -->
  <arg name="moveit_controller_manager" default="moveit_simple_controller_manager/MoveItSimpleControllerManager" />
  <param name="moveit_controller_manager" value="$(arg moveit_controller_manager)"/>
  
  <arg name="controller_manager_name" default="moveit_simple_controller_manager" />
  <param name="controller_manager_name" value="$(arg controller_manager_name)" />
  
  <arg name="use_controller_manager" default="true" />
  <param name="use_controller_manager" value="$(arg use_controller_manager)" />
  
  <!-- load controller_list -->
  <rosparam file="$(find myrobot_moveit_config)/config/controllers.yaml"/>
  

• The joint_trajectory_controller from ros_controllers should implement the action server required for the FollowJointTrajectory calls, and actuate the joints in Gazebo accordingly via the libgazebo_ros_control plugin for Gazebo. I am trying to spawn the controller with:

  <node name="controller_spawner"
        pkg="controller_manager"
        type="spawner"
        respawn="false"
        output="screen"
        ns="/myrobot"
        args="joint_state_controller joint_trajectory_controller"/>
  

The problem:

When I run the above launch files as well as the Gazebo one (which also uploads the robot description to the param server), I get the following output in the MoveIt! terminal:

[FATAL] [1498731799.850090680, 16.100000000]: Parameter '~moveit_controller_manager' not specified. This is needed to identify the plugin to use for interacting with controllers. No paths can be executed.

I'm using ROS Indigo with Ubuntu 14.04.

Could some-one let me know if my overall understanding is flawed, and what might cause the above error message?

Thanks.

Update:

I fixed the above error message by putting the first set of XML tags inside the namespace of the move_group node, with:

<group ns="move_group"> ... </group>

Now the controller manager seems to be connected, but I get the following error messages. When I start the MoveIt! node:

[ERROR] [1498747248.394583362, 16.231000000]: MoveItSimpleControllerManager: Action client not connected: arm_r_controller/follow_joint_trajectory

And when I attempt to execute a trajectory:

[ERROR] [1498747328.213270503, 70.727000000]: Unable to identify any set of controllers that can actuate the specified joints: [ ... ]

It was my understanding that MoveItSimpleControllerManager was the 'action client' - is this wrong?