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

[Ugo Cupcic]

Hi,

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?).

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

Cheers,

Ugo

-- 
Ugo Cupcic         |  Shadow Robot Company | ugo at shadowrobot.com
Software Engineer      251 Liverpool Road
need a Hand?           London  N1 1LX       | +44 20 7700 2487
http://www.shadowrobot.com/hand/              @shadowrobot