Suppressing wheel joint errors when using MoveIt!

Question

Hello,

I am trying out the most excellent newly-released MoveIt! package under ROS Groovy, Ubuntu 12.04 and using a custom robot (Pi Robot) that has a TurtleBot arm attached. The MoveIt! setup assistant worked perfectly and I can run the demo.launch file and play with planning in RViz.

Next, I followed this tutorial to customize the MoveIt! configuration for my robot's servo controller (arbotix_python). Thanks to the tutorial, I can now move my robot's arm using the MoveIt! API. However, in the terminal in which I launch the MoveIt! launch and config files, I get a continual stream of errors of the form:

[ERROR] [1368457768.338308598]: Joint 'base_l_wheel_joint' not found in model 'pi_robot'
[ERROR] [1368457768.338451609]: Joint 'base_r_wheel_joint' not found in model 'pi_robot'

It is true that I don't have wheel joints in my URDF model, but is there any way to tell MoveIt! this so it doesn't complain?

Thanks!
patrick

---

Originally posted by Pi Robot on ROS Answers with karma: 4046 on 2013-05-13

Post score: 0

Answer 1

Hey Patrick,

Thanks for trying out MoveIt! Glad to see it (mostly) worked for you :-)

I am trying to figure out what your situation is exactly -

(1) You have these joints defined in the URDF but are not publishing joint states for them? (2) You don't have these joints defined in the URDF and are publishing joint state for them

If these joints are "passive", e.g. an un-actuated caster, you can actually set them to be passive in the SRDF and then moveit won't complain about them. Otherwise, i.e. if they are actuated, you should have them in your URDF the right way.

---

Originally posted by Sachin Chitta with karma: 1304 on 2013-05-15

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 2

---

Original comments

Comment by Pi Robot on 2013-05-15:
Thanks @Sachin Chitta. It was more like (2) I did not have the joints in my URDF but I don't think I was publishing joint state for them either. In any event, I have added wheel joints to my URDF and made them passive like you suggested and everything works fine know.