How to link odometry to a URDF model ?

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It's where TF comes handy:

A nav_msgs::Odometry is published within a certain frame (field frame_id). In the same time, your URDF model is also attached to some frame.

To make the robot move according to your odometry, you will need to produce a tf frame that describe where the robot is relative to the world. This transform correspond to the pose field of the odometry message.

Imagine you have a robot which main frame is "base_frame" and you are already producing an odometry message. Just produce a tf frame from "world" to "base_frame" that contains the pose values of your odometry message.

For more information and code example, see this tutorial.

Raph