[ros-users] Best way to define my KDL chains ?

[Wim Meeussen]

> I'm trying to build a KDL representation of our hand. I'd like to define
> one chain by finger, starting from the wrist (which will then be
> included in each of those chains), to compute the forward kinematics.
>
> My question is what's the best way to do that? I wrote a urdf file
> containing the model of our hand and parsed it with kdl_parser in my C++
> code. It works, but I'm not sure of how to use this kdl tree to define
> my chains (may be there's a proper way to define the chains in the urdf?).

You did almost all of the work already! The KDL Tree has a method
"getChain" that allows you to extract a chain from the tree. All you
need to do is specify the root and tip name of your chain.


> I also wanted to know if there's a tool in ROS that can be used for a
> simple visualization of my model. May be something like roboview?
> http://eris.liralab.it/wiki/KDL-simple

The urdf has a tool that shows you the structure of your tree
<http://www.ros.org/wiki/urdf/Tutorials/Create%20your%20own%20urdf%20file>.

If you want to visualize your kinematic tree while you're moving it
around, you should use rviz in combination with the robot state
publisher <http://www.ros.org/wiki/robot_state_publisher>.

Wim





-- 
--
Wim Meeussen
Willow Garage Inc.
<http://www.willowgarage.com)