[Rock-dev] Fwd: Re: Robot visualization in Vizkit3D

[Sylvain Joyeux]

On 05/07/2013 04:38 PM, Sylvain Joyeux wrote:
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: Robot visualization in Vizkit3D
> Date: Tue, 07 May 2013 15:47:33 +0200
> From: Sylvain Joyeux <sylvain.joyeux at dfki.de>
> Organization: DFKI RIC
> To: Malte Wirkus <malte.wirkus at dfki.de>
>
> On 05/07/2013 09:56 AM, Malte Wirkus wrote:
>> for a software project I am working on, I am developing a visualization
>> of multi-body robots based on Open Scene Graph (OSG).
>> Since I did not find something similiar in ROCK's Vizkit3D, I wonder if
>> you might be interested if I make this available as a Plug-In for Vizkit?
>>
>> Here are some maybe relevant things about it:
>>
>> * As robot description format it used URDF
>>     (http://www.ros.org/wiki/urdf)
>> * For kinematic calculation, KDL is used
>>     (http://www.orocos.org/wiki/orocos/kdl-wiki)
>> * Therefor there are dependecies on OSG, URDF, a URDF parser library, a
>>     URDF to KDL parser library
>> * All these libraries but OSG are available in ROS
KDL is available in Rock. Last time I looked, the URDF tooling was 
reasonably ROS independent, so could be integrated in Rock as well.

>> * It makes use of the ressource_retriever from ROS
>>     (http://ros.org/wiki/resource_retriever), but can also be used
>>     without. Absolute paths to the 3D meshes have to be set in the URDF
>>     file then.
I guess we would have to look into how to handle that within Rock. The 
ressource retriever is problematic as it depends on packages that 
conflict with dependencies in GDAL, which we use in envire (a pretty 
core package)

>> Forward kinematics are calculated within the visualization. Practically
>> that requires joint data (current positions) as input for the plug in.
I guess that can be arranged ;-)

>> Having it as part of ROCK one could also say that forward kinematics are
>> calculated elsewhere, and the input for the plugin would be 3D poses for
>> each link of the robot. This is the way they do it in ROS (with RVIZ,
>> http://www.ros.org/wiki/rviz).
We definitely could feed it transformer data as well.

In general, it sounds very useful !
-- 
Sylvain Joyeux (Dr.Ing.)
Space & Security Robotics

!!! Achtung, neue Telefonnummer!!!

Standort Bremen:
DFKI GmbH
Robotics Innovation Center
Robert-Hooke-Straße 5
28359 Bremen, Germany

Phone: +49 (0)421 178-454136
Fax:   +49 (0)421 218-454150
E-Mail: robotik at dfki.de

Weitere Informationen: http://www.dfki.de/robotik
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Deutsches Forschungszentrum fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz GmbH
Firmensitz: Trippstadter Straße 122, D-67663 Kaiserslautern
Geschaeftsfuehrung: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Wolfgang Wahlster
(Vorsitzender) Dr. Walter Olthoff
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: Prof. Dr. h.c. Hans A. Aukes
Amtsgericht Kaiserslautern, HRB 2313
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Kaiserslautern (HRB 2313)
USt-Id.Nr.:    DE 148646973
Steuernummer:  19/673/0060/3
-----------------------------------------------------------------------