[ros-users] Stable release robot_model 1.2

[Wim Meeussen]

All,

The robot_model stack reached version 1.2! This stack contains the
toolchain to construct a kinematic/dynamic model of your robot (urdf),
and integrate that model with the transform library (tf), the
kinematics and dynamics library (kdl), our simulator (gazebo),
collada, etc.

This is a stable release that will get included in our upcoming
C-turtle distro. Compared to the 1.0 release, many bugs got fixed, and
some exciting new features were added. A few highlights:

* Collada:
  - new packages to convert URDF models into Collada format

 * Robot state publisher:
  - supports publishing robot models with only fixed links,
  - allows partial joint state vectors, and
  - correctly deals with robot models that only have 1 or 2 links.

 * URDF and kdl parser:
  - read robot model directly from parameter server

For a complete list of the changes, see
<http://www.ros.org/wiki/robot_model/ChangeList/1.2>.


One of the bugfixes in the urdf package might cause regression if you
have a urdf file that does not comply with the spec. A bug in the
parser could in some cases have added links to your model if you
referred to a link from a joint block, but forgot to specify the link
block itself. Now the parser will always fail if you forget to specify
a link block.  When this happens, the parse error will give you all
information on how to fix your urdf file.

Wim


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