On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 9:00 AM, garratt <garrattgallagher@gmail.com> wrote:

The error comes from collada_urdf::ColladaWriter::loadMeshWithSTLLoader
where STLLoader calling readBinary() on a clearly nonbinary file.

This is expected. From the documentation (http://www.ros.org/wiki/collada_urdf), under Limitations:

Only binary STL mesh geometries are supported

Is there a new way to generate the urdf/collada files? or was switching

to .dae files in the xacro file a mistake?

No, urdf_to_collada doesn't directly support .dae geometries. Many open source applications, such as Blender and MeshLab, will convert from .dae to alternative mesh formats, however.

If you'd like to add this functionality yourself, I believe Assimp (http://assimp.sourceforge.net) supports loading geometries from .dae files.

Tim