All, The robot_model stack reached version 1.2! This stack contains the toolchain to construct a kinematic/dynamic model of your robot (urdf), and integrate that model with the transform library (tf), the kinematics and dynamics library (kdl), our simulator (gazebo), collada, etc. This is a stable release that will get included in our upcoming C-turtle distro. Compared to the 1.0 release, many bugs got fixed, and some exciting new features were added. A few highlights: * Collada: - new packages to convert URDF models into Collada format * Robot state publisher: - supports publishing robot models with only fixed links, - allows partial joint state vectors, and - correctly deals with robot models that only have 1 or 2 links. * URDF and kdl parser: - read robot model directly from parameter server For a complete list of the changes, see . One of the bugfixes in the urdf package might cause regression if you have a urdf file that does not comply with the spec. A bug in the parser could in some cases have added links to your model if you referred to a link from a joint block, but forgot to specify the link block itself. Now the parser will always fail if you forget to specify a link block. When this happens, the parse error will give you all information on how to fix your urdf file. Wim -- -- Wim Meeussen Willow Garage Inc.