ROS tests with robot description

Quality Assurance
1

What is the best way to write tests that require a robot description? Are there any simple xacro files for testing or even a parametrizable robot description?

An example of such a test would be a ROS node which collects the current joint state and represents them in a model for use in a model view. This node requires the robot description to know about the available joints and then is updated frequently with joint_states messages.

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2

This sounds like what rostest is for.

If you’re not aware, rostests are basically launch files, but launched by a special roslaunch wrapper that is specifically intended to be able to test nodes in a (mini) application context.

Populating the robot_description parameter (or any parameter really) is done in exactly the same way as you would in a regular launch file.

This node requires the robot description to know about the available joints and then is updated frequently with joint_states messages.

The rostest could also start a second node that generates those joint states.

Edit: perhaps interesting: wiki/Quality/Tutorials/UnitTesting.

3

Yes I’m aware of rostest and also about the possibility of loading a robot_description via launch file.

However, what I’m looking for is some kind of “standard” robot description that can be used for testing.

4

My apologies. I’d somehow completely missed you were actually asking about/for a suitable xacro/urdf for testing, instead of how to test.

Are there any simple xacro files for testing or even a parametrizable robot description?

I’m not entirely sure I understand what you are asking for, but nodes such as joint_state_publisher include a nr of small urdfs that are used in the tests that accompany it. See ros/joint_state_publisher/joint_state_publisher/test. The test suite for xacro is another: ros/xacro/test.

5

I am not sure if this is what you are looking for… but I created generic xacro files for testing description of different components in our lab.

I call this script with different parameters from a roslaunch test file. this is just test for parsing and if you want one can test also the description in rviz.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<launch>
    <arg name="type" default="tools"/>
    <arg name="object_to_test" default="measurement_tool"/>

  <!-- send urdf to param server -->
  <param name="object_description" command="$(find xacro)/xacro --inorder '$(find iirob_description)/$(arg type)/urdf/$(arg object_to_test)/test_$(arg object_to_test).urdf.xacro'"/>

  <!-- robot state publisher -->
  <node pkg="robot_state_publisher" type="robot_state_publisher" name="tool_state_publisher">
      <param name="publish_frequency" type="double" value="50.0" />
      <remap from="robot_description" to="object_description" />
  </node>

  <node pkg="rviz" type="rviz" args="-d $(find iirob_description)/common/rviz/test_objects.rviz" name="test_objects" required="true">
  </node>

</launch>

If you want to test robots with non-static joints you could use something like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<launch>

  <arg name="pkg" default="iirob_kuka_bringup"/>
  <arg name="file_name" default="r5"/>

  <param name="robot_description" command="$(find xacro)/xacro --inorder '$(find iirob_kuka_bringup)/urdf/$(arg file_name).urdf.xacro'" />

  <node name="joint_state_publisher" pkg="joint_state_publisher" type="joint_state_publisher" >
    <param name="use_gui" value="true"/>
  </node>

  <!-- robot state publisher -->
  <node pkg="robot_state_publisher" type="robot_state_publisher" name="tool_state_publisher">
      <param name="publish_frequency" type="double" value="50.0" />
  </node>

  <node name="test_robots" pkg="rviz" type="rviz" args="-d $(find iirob_description)/common/rviz/test_robots.rviz" />

</launch>

I hope this can help you further…

2 Likes
6

Thanks, that’s what I was looking for. Can I find the iirob_description package somewhere?

7

You can download a version of this package here.

I deleted all meshes and urdf files since they are currently not public.

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