Difference between `tmr_description` and e.g. `tm5_description` ?

[danielcranston]

Hello @TechmanRobotIncOwner,

There seems to be some redundancy between tmr_description, and tm5_description / tm12_description. I have some quick questions regarding this:

1: If I want to run the ROS driver against a TM5, which description package should I be using?

The tm5_700_moveit_config uses tm5_description. However, I'm interested in applying the error compensation discussed in https://github.com/TechmanRobotInc/tmr_ros1/issues/15, and it seems the intended script for that lives in tmr_description which makes assumptions that are not valid for the tm5_description URDF layout (see below).

2: It seems the structure of the URDFs are completely different between the tmr_description and the other description packages.

For instance,

• joint names:
  • tmr_description: joint_1, joint_2, joint_3, ...
  • tm5_description: shoulder_1_joint, shoulder_2_joint, elbow_joint, ...
• relative joint position/orientations:
  • The kinematic chain seems to be defined quite differently. See the below image which shows the visual part for the same part of the robot, as defined in tm5_description and tmr_description respectively:

3: Can you give some history of why these seemingly overlapping packages exist?

It's currently a little bit confusing to understand what you should focus on and what is potentially old/deprecated code. A short explanation here would help a lot I think!

Thank you for reading!

[TechmanRobotIncOwner]

Hi,

"tmr_description" and "tm5_description" is almost the same, the only difference is URDF coordinate.

We will merge these two in the future.

[danielcranston]

I noticed the packages are still not merged even though this ticket was closed. Could you give an update on this @TechmanRobotIncOwner ?

[TechmanRobotIncOwner]

Hi, we are going to to upload the new model in these two months. Thank you.