From #72:

The test_robot.urdf from ros/urdf repo can be used to test it.

https://github.com/ros/urdf/tree/melodic-devel/urdf/test

<urdf-viewer src="package-prefix" urdf="https://.../path/to/urdf"></urdf-viewer>

results in package-prefix/https://.../path/to/urdf

You have to click and release again to get it to stop following

Providing a string to replace package:// is technically incorrect by ROS standards. An option has been added to to provide a package map which could replace the currently functionality entirely. The URDF file should also not be loaded relative to the package path, either.

http://wiki.ros.org/urdf/XML/joint

• prismatic
• floating
• planar

Open question: How do we set a float joint? 6 inputs for setOffset?

The package and urdf fields can be changed individually and the element does not debounce the load requests, meaning that a URDF could attempt to be loaded with an incompatible package path even though that's not the intent leading it errors.

A debounce-like mechanism should be added here:
https://github.com/gkjohnson/urdf-loaders/blob/master/javascript/urdf-viewer-element.js#L336

Changes

• URDFLoader is Instantiate-able
• Add setValue field to update joint angles
• Investigate joint inversion
• Fix rendering inefficiency in element
• Mesh scale (#37)
• Separate the example code for use in other repos

• Add documentation for URDFRobot and URDFJoint.

• Consider adding the workingPath as an option to options argument instead of an argument to parse. It could be an argument for the load function, as well.

• Consider removing the onComplete callback from parse

• There's no reason the function should return an array of robots.

• A simple "setJoint" function would be nice to have on the root object and it seems like there's no reason to add cruft on the child objects, so that can possibly be removed.

• Make the model instantiate-able

• Provide THREE.LoadingManager to override URL fetces

• Rename "angles" to something more general and applicable to all joint types. "values", "configuration", "articulation", "state", etc. Multi-dimensional joints should store data as an array. Waiting for an example model that uses planar or floating joint types.

• Remove the urdf field from joints and links and put all those fields directly on the THREE object. type would get changed to jointType to not conflict with Object3D.type

In the element on line https://github.com/gkjohnson/urdf-loaders/blob/master/javascript/urdf-viewer-element.js#L317 so the robot will have cast shadows on it, as well.

The loader will create multiple instances of the same geometry rather than reusing it. This can be complicated for some geometry formats, but possibly the default mesh callback can cache the geometry and clone it.

In this case the model is off center, causing the shadow to be clipped.

This line replaces the double slashes with a single one, which causes problems when loading with a URI like this.

https://github.com/gkjohnson/urdf-loaders/blob/master/javascript/URDFLoader.js#L96

• geometry is loaded with an offset rotation
• no textures or materials are supported
• node hierarchy is not created

The API for the Unity Parser is a little out of date compared to the THREE.js one. Would be good to update it to support other joints and attributes.

• Rename URDFJointList to URDFRobot
• Rename URDFParser to URDFLoader
• Make an options struct to pass into the URDFLoader functions
• Support multiple package definitions via Dictionary<string, string>

The documentation does not specify what the object format is for the robot or joints very well, or what functions are available to be called.

These should probably be pulled out into separate classes.

Related #14

Appveyor.com
LGTM.com

Primitives are loaded separately from meshes, so there's no way to preprocess them the way we do meshes, which means it's a bit difficult to add shadow-receiving and casting state to them. To make it worse they're added on the next frame after load. Overall it would be nice to fire a mess after the model has completed loading all models.

One feature that I would require is to find the meshes for an URDF in more than one ROS package, for the case that the robot description is distributed over multiple packages.

My idea is to list the required packages in a .rosinstall file (example), parse this from the URDF loader and then replace the <mesh filename="package://..." /> with the respective link from the list.
I was thinking of the .rosinstall format because I want to link to github repositories (and not to local packages of the pc).

I suppose to implement this feature optionally, so one skip the mentioned list-file if only one package is required.

@gkjohnson What do you think of this feature?

Some of the original changes to the URDF models were incorrect. The T12 model was intended to have the legs attached to the top side while the other TriATHLETE models were intended to have the legs attached to the bottom.

• Revert the changed T12 URDF model
• Swap the lower and upper limits for the TriATHLETE models
• Update the picture for the README

Joint rotation directions seem off in Robonaut and Valkyrie models.

Robonaut 2 found here:
https://gitlab.com/nasa-jsc-robotics/r2_description

And Valkyrie:
https://gitlab.com/nasa-jsc-robotics/val_description

That includes all joint types, geometry types, multiple packages, etc.

ModelLoader supports drag and drop in the browser:
https://github.com/gkjohnson/threejs-model-loader

LoadingManager affords url override for drag an drop:
mrdoob/three.js#10580

There's no reason to use package://.

Make sure this works with the Unity loader

Like the ATHLETE body

Provide an es6 import and UMD variant

Edge does not display the joint sliders well, at the moment because styling range-inputs across browsers is inconsistent. Using something like paper-slider would be more cross platform.

Updating the camera focus based on the robot bounding box can cause the model to move up and down too much. See line 63f599a#diff-2a12f3714b8acb49f99007cc2a720c89R238.

Possible Solutions

• Average out the center of the bounding box over multiple frames
• Interpolate to the center so it's less notice-able
• Add an attribute to enable / disable the feature

Neither TriATHLETE URDF models specify joint limits for the prismatic TC${ i }A and TC${ i }B joints.

A limit of 0 to 0.065 seems to be reasonable for the TriATHLETE robot.

Additionally, the TriATHLETE Climbing URDF moves the same joints in the wrong direction. The axis will need to be updated.

There are a number of common formats used in URDF files, including DAE and possible ASCII STL.

Used to generate URDF files from different file parts.

http://wiki.ros.org/xacro

• When pressing undo after changing an angle in the URDF joint list inspector, it doesn't undo that last joint angle set.
• When clicking off and then back on the joint list, the state is not retained.

http://wiki.ros.org/urdf/XML/link

... in the <geometry> node

So it lines up with the URDF spec

The example page has gotten a little long and could be pulled into separate files. The controls could be pulled into their own element / wrap the URDF element

Both loaders assume -Infinity to Infinity min max limits if they're not specified at the moment, which is incorrect according to the spec -- they should both be 0 by default. However, changing that will break the loading of the TriATHLETE URDF files because they do not specify joint limits. The limits should be copied over from the T12 urdf file before the change.

Textures are always newly loaded when processing a link material, even if it is used and has already been loaded for another visual link node:

Should add a map of loaded textures for every load and / or add an override-able defaultTextureLoader function similar to defaultMeshLoader function so textures can be cached globally if needed.

Make the collada loader work more closely to Unity's built in one

TODO: Find example model

The STL Loading doesn't seem to handle the full model for some reason. Here is the foot model as viewed in the THREE.STLLoader

And the tool clamp

But the foot looks like this in the viewer: