ECSE473 Modern Robotic Programming Laboratory 2

This project was developed as part of ECSE 473: Modern Robotic Programming – Laboratory 2, which focused on visualizing a mobile robot model using URDF in RViz. The lab involved constructing a robot description package (navvis_description) that defines the robot’s physical structure using XACRO files, establishes static transforms between key components (e.g., base_link, imu, camera), and integrates the model with robot_state_publisher for real-time visualization in ROS Noetic.

  navvis_description
  ├── CMakeLists.txt
  ├── package.xml
  ├── launch
  │   ├── display.launch 
  ├── config
  │   └── config.rviz
  ├── urdf
  │   ├── robot.urdf
  │   └── robot.xacro
  └── README.md

Prerequisites

In order to launch the project, you should already have:

• Installed ROS Noetic
• The joint state publisher GUI

  
    sudo apt install ros-noetic-joint-state-publisher-gui
  
  

• Gazebo plugins

  
    sudo apt install ros-noetic-plugins
  
  

• Velodyne description

  
    sudo apt install ros-noetic-velodyne-description
  
  

Available Parameters to use with display.launch

The launch file takes three arguments:

• use_robot_state_publisher:= (true|false) - whether the robot_state_publisher will be used to launch (Added for Lab#3)
• use_xacro:=(true|false) - whether the xacro file will be used to launch
• file - file name
• use_joint_state_publisher_gui=(true|false) whether the joint_state_publisher_gui will be used

View the Robot Description in rviz

• rviz with the joint_state_publisher GUI

  • Launch by using the urdf file

  
    roslaunch navvis_description display.launch
  
  

  or by using some arguments:

  
   roslaunch navvis_description display.launch use_xacro:=false use_robot_state_publisher:=true use_joint_state_publisher_gui:=true
  
  

  • Launch by using the xacro file

  
    roslaunch navvis_description display.launch use_xacro:=true
  
  

  or by using some arguments:

  
   roslaunch navvis_description display.launch use_xacro:=true use_robot_state_publisher:=true use_joint_state_publisher_gui:=true
  
  

• rviz with the joint_state_publisher GUI

  • Launch by using the urdf file

  
    roslaunch navvis_description display.launch use_joint_state_publisher_gui:=false
  
  

  or by using some arguments:

  
   roslaunch navvis_description display.launch use_xacro:=false use_robot_state_publisher:=true use_joint_state_publisher_gui:=false
  
  

  • Launch by using the xacro file

  
    roslaunch navvis_description display.launch use_xacro:=true use_joint_state_publisher_gui:=false
  
  

  or by using some arguments:

  
   roslaunch navvis_description display.launch use_xacro:=true use_robot_state_publisher:=true use_joint_state_publisher_gui:=false
  
  

  • rviz without both robot_state_publisher and the joint_state_publisher GUI (for purely static transformations as asked in the beggining for Lab#3)

      roslaunch navvis_description display.launch use_xacro:=true use_robot_state_publisher:=false use_joint_state_publisher_gui:=false
  
  

Authors

• Ilke Kas - PhD at ECSE - Ilke Kas Github