Overwrite robot_description
Hi, I am using the original franka_ros packages (that I do not want to modify) with my custom packages. My problem is that the original franka_control.launch file loads the panda's urdf as the robot_description parameter, however, I want to add other components within a scene such as table, etc. I have two ideas how can I add these components but I am not sure, which one is better or what is the correct way of doing it.
A) Overwrite the original robot_description with these commands:
<!-- Overwrite panda description with panda_on_table description -->
<arg default="$(find franka_mis_description)/urdf/table_mis.xacro" name="model"/>
<param command="$(find xacro)/xacro $(arg model)" name="robot_description"/>
Do I need to load robot_state_publisher and joint_state_publisher again?
B) Is there a way to extend the loaded robot_description with another urdf file?
You can always add new models with urdf file to visualize in the rviz or use it somewhere else. To do that create new urdf file with the required models in the world. What you can do is to use another parameter name instead of the
robot_descriptionnow you can also add this model in rviz as well.
@aarsh_t and for creating a link between these two models, can I just use a static publisher?
yes, you can use static publisher to create the link between them.
@aarsh_t: how would consumers of
robot_descriptionknow they would also need to load/parseworld_description?I did not understand what you mean by the consumer of
robot_description?RViz, MoveIt,
robot_state_publisher,joint_state_publisher,ros_controlnodes, etc.Basically nodes who would want to 'read' the
robot_descriptionparameter.Okay, I might not have solution for all because I haven't faced all the need but for rviz, you can add new robotModel. Also I think you can create static transformation to get the tf to use it further. But as far as I understand, he only need to add the static things in the environment. So I am not sure if he need the Moveit or ros_control.
If You need to use
moveitand theros_control, you can use namespaces to load robot_description. I have recently used 2 UR arms simultaneously with themoveitandros_control. It was quite good learning experience but I still have to make good tutorial from it so I can share it with the community.Thank you, it worked to some extent, however, when I have two robot models visualized in Rviz, Panda's model has a huge delay in terms of visualization. Is there a way how to handle it? I tried to decrease the
robot_state_publisherfor the table model but it is not helping.