Dear ROS-users,
unfortunately, I did not receive any comments to my question on answers.ros.org (
http://answers.ros.org/question/49915/modelling-an-endoscopic-arm-with-urdf/).
This is why I would like to start a discussion here on the mailing list.
As a short introduction:
I am currently trying to use ROS for an endoscopic, trunk/tentacle-like, flexible robot manipulator (see
http://www.miror.eu/).
Eventually, I would like to be able to use ROS functionality already available (i.e. motion planning, collision checking,...) with my manipulator.
Therefore, I am trying to find a good representation for my kinematical structure (robot_description, urdf) and implement services for direct/inverse kinematics at the moment.
For a theoretical background information on the specific differences between "normal" robot kinematic structures and continuum robots please refer to [1].
Since I haven't found any related entry here, I first would like to know whether someone already has started to us ROS for a robot with similar kinematics.
Thus, if you have experiences with such kinematical structures, I'd be happy to share experiences and discuss best-practices.
I already tried some approaches but I don't want to overload this first message with too much details...
Any comments are welcome!
With best regards,
Felix
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[1]
@ARTICLE{Hannan03kinematicsand,
author = {Michael W. Hannan and Ian D. Walker},
title = {Kinematics and the Implementation of an Elephant's Trunk Manipulator and Other Continuum Style Robots},
journal = {Journal of Robotic Systems},
year = {2003},
volume = {20},
pages = {45--63}
}
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