On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 1:20 PM, John Hsu <johnhsu@willowgarage.com> wrote:
> Hi Patrick,
>
> I get around this by starting the world paused with -u flag (see this launch
> script for example), and spawning everything when simulation is paused, then
> unpausing after everything is in place.  Another strategy is to write a
> script that waits for certain conditions to be satisfied before spawning.
> One example is here, which waits on a ros topic, but you could very well
> call the gazebo/get_world_properties service offered by gazebo and enforce
> some kind of spawning dependencies.
>
Hi John,
Thanks for those ideas.  I think the pause-world option looks like the
most applicable scenario -- pausing the simulator while things
magically appear is as reasonable as anything else.  In the mean time,
I created a single URDF file with my table as one link and the objects
as 30 separate links attached to the table via "floating" joints.  If
I can pick up the objects without the table coming along (which is
what "floating" implies to me), then I think I'll go with this
approach.

--wpd