> I'm trying to build a KDL representation of our hand. I'd like to define > one chain by finger, starting from the wrist (which will then be > included in each of those chains), to compute the forward kinematics. > > My question is what's the best way to do that? I wrote a urdf file > containing the model of our hand and parsed it with kdl_parser in my C++ > code. It works, but I'm not sure of how to use this kdl tree to define > my chains (may be there's a proper way to define the chains in the urdf?). You did almost all of the work already! The KDL Tree has a method "getChain" that allows you to extract a chain from the tree. All you need to do is specify the root and tip name of your chain. > I also wanted to know if there's a tool in ROS that can be used for a > simple visualization of my model. May be something like roboview? > http://eris.liralab.it/wiki/KDL-simple The urdf has a tool that shows you the structure of your tree . If you want to visualize your kinematic tree while you're moving it around, you should use rviz in combination with the robot state publisher . Wim -- -- Wim Meeussen Willow Garage Inc.