urdf_viz

Visualize URDF(Unified Robot Description Format) file. urdf_viz is written by rust-lang. It supports .obj files as mesh format, but it can use other formats by converting other files using meshlabserver command or assimp command. Please install meshlab and assimp-utils if you need to visualize .dae, .stl or something.

Install

If you are using rust-lang already and cargo is installed, you can install by cargo install.

$ cargo install urdf_viz

Install mesh converter commands

$ sudo apt-get install meshlab assimp-utils

Command line

urdf_viewer command will be installed by cargo.

$ urdf_viewer URDF_FILE.urdf

It is possible to use xacro file directly. It will be converted by rosrun xacro xacro in urdf_viewer.

$ urdf_viewer XACRO_FILE.urdf.xacro

The default mesh converter is meshlabserver. If you failed to convert mesh files, try -a option to use assimp.

$ urdf_viewer -a URDF_FILE.urdf

For other commands, please read -h option.

$ urdf_viewer -h

GUI

In the GUI, you can

• Move a joint
  • set the angle of a joint by Up/Down key
  • Ctrl + Drag to move the angle of a joint
  • change the joint to be moved by [ and ]
• Inverse kinematics (only positions)
  • Shift + Drag to use inverse kinematics(Y and Z axis)
  • Shift + Ctrl + Drag to use inverse kinematics(Y and X axis)
  • change the move target for inverse kinematics by , and .
• r key to set random joints
• Move view point
  • Mouse Right Drag to translate view camera position
  • Mouse Left Drag to look around
  • Scroll to zoom in/out

Garally

Dependencies

urdf-viz is strongly depend on kiss3d, which is super easy to use, great 3D graphic engine.