ROS3D.UrdfClient suddenly stopped loading meshes

Question

I'm trying to visualize a 3d robot simulation on a web browser and I'm currently using the ros3djs library (not sure if this is the best choice yet).

Some days ago I managed to visualize correctly the PR2 robot as shown in this tutorial, and then I replaced it with my robot meshes and urdf. The meshes were visible but the relations between links and joints weren't correct and the robot seemed just hit by a truck.

Suddenly, yesterday, the meshes of my robot stopped being visualized in the browser and I realized that the the HTTP request of the meshes (sent by the ROS3D.UrdfClient function) are not made anymore.

I tried to remove and update the ros3d.js file but didn't work.

I don't have any idea of where the problem could be.

The only comment I can make is that yesterday I was trying to solve the problem of the meshes (related to the tf2_web_republisher) node and I added a new node aiming to republish the messages from the /tf topic to the /tf2_web_republish/goal. That didn't even work and I don't think that this can be the cause, but who knows.

This is the code that I'm using to visualize the 3D simulation.

  async function init(){

    var ros = new ROSLIB.Ros({
      url : 'ws://localhost:9090'
    });
  
    ros.on('connection', function() {
      console.log('Connected to websocket server.');
    });
  
    ros.on('error', function(error) {
      console.log('Error connecting to websocket server: ', error);
    });
  
    ros.on('close', function() {
      console.log('Connection to websocket server closed.');
    });

    // Create the main viewer.
    var rosViewer = new ROS3D.Viewer({
      divID : 'urdf',
      width : 800,
      height : 600,
      antialias : true,
    });

    // Add a grid.
    rosViewer.addObject(new ROS3D.Grid());

    // Setup a client to listen to TFs.
    var tfClient = new ROSLIB.TFClient({
      ros : ros,
      angularThres : 0.01,
      transThres : 0.01,
      rate : 10.0
    });

    //// Setup the URDF client.
    //var urdfClient = new ROS3D.UrdfClient({
    //  ros : ros,
    //  tfClient : tfClient,
    //  path: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PR2/pr2_common/melodic-devel/',
    //  rootObject : rosViewer.scene,
    //});

    var urdfClient = new ROS3D.UrdfClient({
      ros : ros,
      tfClient : tfClient,
      path: 'static/',
      rootObject : rosViewer.scene,
    });

  }

  
</script>

 


And this is the launch file that I made and used to work:




<launch>
    <arg name="model"   default="h2017"/>
    <arg name="ns"      default="dsr01"/>
    <arg name="gui"     default="True" />
    <arg name="remap"   default="False"/>
    <arg name="color"   default="white"/>
    <arg name="gripper" default="none"/>
    <arg name="rviz"    default="True"/>

    <param name="robot_description" command="$(find xacro)/xacro '$(find dsr_description)/xacro/$(arg model).urdf.xacro' '--inorder' 'namespace:=$(arg ns)' color:=$(arg color) gripper:=$(arg gripper)"/>

  <node name="ros_bridge_websocket_name" pkg="rosbridge_server" type="rosbridge_websocket" /> 

  <node name="robot_state_publisher" pkg="robot_state_publisher" type="robot_state_publisher" />   <param name="use_gui" type="bool" value="true" />     <!-- this next node gives control over the joints
-->   <node name="joint_state_publisher_gui" pkg="joint_state_publisher_gui" type="joint_state_publisher_gui" />   <node name="tf2_web_republisher" pkg="tf2_web_republisher" type="tf2_web_republisher" />   <node name="map_server" pkg="map_server" type="map_server" args="/home/dario/maps/rail_maps/ilab.pgm 0.05" />
     <!-- Show in Rviz -->
    <group if="$(eval arg('rviz') == True)">
    <node name="rviz" pkg="rviz" type="rviz" args="-d $(find dsr_description)/rviz/default.rviz"/>
    </group>    
</launch>

I'm using ROS Noetic on Ubuntu 20.04.

I hope I wrote all the relevant informations. Thanks to everyone that may help.

Answer 1

The problem about the meshes has been resolved. I had to add the rosapi node to the launch file as follows: <node name="ros_api" pkg="rosapi" type="rosapi_node" />.

Regarding the problem with the tf2_web_republisher, I realized that the problem was related to the name of the base link. In fact, in my robot xacro files the first link was referred as "base_0" while the ros3djs library expect the first link named as: "base_link".

So I simply used the command grep -r -l base_0 (Ubuntu) to search for all the files that contain that name and replaced it with the correct one.

After this everything worked.