Greetings. This is for a project that's going to use a MiR robot but is currently at a proof-of-concept phase in Gazebo. We'll have a UR 10 attached to the MiR. The UR has a ROS package and a Gazebo model but the MiR has neither. This question is about obtaining simplified behavior for the mobile robot in Gazebo.

The MiR can be given goal positions via the REST API. Our plan is to create an action server ("mircomm") to take a Pose from our dispatch node and send that request to the MiR via REST. We are therefore treating navigation as a black box; we expect the MiR to provide sufficiently accurate positioning. When using Gazebo, mircomm might send either a MoveBaseGoal or Pose to a navigator node we'll make for that simulation. Here, finally, is my question. Can we use movebase or ROS navigation with the gazebo/modelstates topic for localization?

Since we're treating MiR navigation as a black box there seems to be no reason to model a range sensor and perform mapping and localization in Gazebo. We will have to create a static map of the world for path planning, I suppose, which would be no problem.

Here are some related posts that don't quite answer this question. For example, I think the first is about using just odometry (not in Gazebo) and no range sensors but this question I'm posting is about using gazebo/modelstates directly (instead of jointstates).

https://answers.ros.org/question/55609/navigation-stack-without-sensor/

https://answers.ros.org/question/240009/simple-move_base-example-without-sensors/

https://answers.ros.org/question/234032/local-costmap-static-without-any-sensor-information/