[ros-users] GazeboRosF3D plugin

Hi,

Has anyone had previous success with GazeboRosF3D in cturtle? In
attempting to use the GazeboRosF3D I've hit a bit of a wall. I believe
that I'm using it correctly and the topic is even being published to,
but I get all zeros back in situations that seem to clearly imply
there should be some forces and torques.

My urdf entry looks like:

<gazebo>
    <controller:gazebo_ros_f3d name="${side}_FTsensor"
plugin="libgazebo_ros_f3d.so">
        <alwaysOn>true</alwaysOn>
        <updateRate>100.0</updateRate>
        <bodyName>DarmSim/${side}Arm/WAM/LowerWristFTPalmLink</bodyName>
        <topicName>DarmSim/${side}Arm/WAM/Wrist/FTSensor</topicName>
        <frameName>DarmSim/${side}Arm/WAM/LowerWristFTPalmLink</frameName>
        <interface:position name="${side}_FTsensor_force_iface" />
    </controller:gazebo_ros_f3d>
</gazebo>

Where side is being filled in by "Left" and "Right", and
"DarmSim/${side}Arm/WAM/LowerWristFTPalmLink" is the name of a link
defined above the f3d entry in the xacro.

Running the simulation produces the expected topics:

/DarmSim/LeftArm/WAM/Wrist/FTSensor
/DarmSim/RightArm/WAM/Wrist/FTSensor

But echoing them while performing an action that should clearly
produce a force and torque on that link consistently only produce 0s.

I can find virtually no references to GazeboRosF3D being used in
google searches or in the stacks I have checked out with the one
exception being in
"pr2_common/pr2_description/urdf/gripper_v0/gripper.gazebo.xacro" but
that doesn't seem to be being subsequently used by anything. My next
step is to dive into the code behind GazeboRosF3D.

Is anyone aware of some obvious factors that could explain the
behavior I'm seeing?

     Andrew