Announcing: `rviz_robot_description_topic`

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A little overdue, but never too late for an announcement I guess :slight_smile: .

I’ve written a small rviz utility that can handle a /robot_description topic within ROS 1 rviz:

rviz_robot_description_topic

rviz_robot_description_topic
rviz_robot_description_topic394×220 13 KB

Think of migrating to ROS 2? Why not do it step by step!

In ROS 2 there are no global parameters anymore, so /robot_description became a topic. And this would even make sense for ROS 1 as now you can modify your description on the fly!

Little is holding you back from using a /robot_description topic already in ROS 1, just launch a minimal node like this:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import rospy
from std_msgs.msg import String

rospy.init_node("robot_description_publisher")
pub = rospy.Publisher("robot_description", String, latch=True, queue_size=1)
pub.publish(rospy.get_param("robot_description"))
rospy.spin()

Optionally (if you want the dynamic part in ROS 1 already), you can subscribe to the topic instead of listening to the parameter:

  void robot_description_cb(const std_msgs::String::ConstPtr & msg)
  {
    ROS_INFO("Received new robot description");
    urdf::Model model;
    model.initString(msg->data);

Only thing remaining: rviz cannot display it :pensive_face: . A PR was rejected, hence the creation of this package :cupcake:.

Just add it to your workspace and rviz supports the /robot_description topic as well. We’ve prepared and migrated several robots (ours and customers) like this already.

Best part: you can already start using rviz2 because topics transparently go through the ros1_bridge!

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