If you don't want to worry about publishing joint angles yet, and just
want to visualize your model, check out easy_tf_publisher in my
urdf_tools stack.
http://www.ros.org/wiki/easy_state_publisher
Or if you want to manually set the joint angles, try joint_controller
and robot_state_publisher.

-David!!

2010/9/29 Lorenz Mösenlechner <moesenle@in.tum.de>:
> Hi,
>
> the common way is to run a robot_state_publisher which takes the joint
> states on a topic and publishes the transforms. You find the corresponding
> tutorial here:
> http://www.ros.org/wiki/robot_state_publisher/Tutorials/Using%20the%20robot%20state%20publisher%20on%20your%20own%20robot
>
> Lorenz
>
>> What is the typical usage when publishing transforms to match a urdf
>> file?   For example, the urdf file has the standard form:
>>
>> Link1 -> Joint1 -> Link2 -> Joint2 -> Link3
>>
>> In my code, I tf broadcast the joint angles.  (i.e. Link1 -> Joint1 and
>> Link2 -> Joint2).  But must I also broadcast the link transforms even
>> though they never change?  (i.e. Joint1 -> Link2 and Joint2 -> Link3).
>> Is there some way to avoid this?
>>
>> But what I would REALLY like to do for now is just view the URDF file in
>> rviz.  But despite all origins being specified in the file, rviz says it
>> can't find the transforms between the objects.  Is there a simple URDF
>> file viewer (in boxturtle)?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> -Ben
>>
>
> --
> Lorenz Mösenlechner            | moesenle@in.tum.de
> Technische Universität München | Boltzmannstr. 3
> 85748 Garching bei München     | Germany
> http://ias.cs.tum.edu/         | Tel: +49 (89) 289-26910
>
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