Could not initialize robot simulation interface

[tanvir.taaha]

I’m relatively new to ROS. I started with raw URDF exported from SOLIDWORKS. Then created moveit_config package by moveit_setup_assistant. Here are the related files:

Here is the ROSJECT that I created to demonstrate my problem: prochesta_arm

URDF file: ~/catkin_ws/src/prochesta_arm/urdf/prochesta_arm.urdf.xacro
gazebo.launch file: ~/catkin_ws/src/prochesta_arm_moveit_config/launch/gazebo.launch

After launch the error I get:

    [ERROR] [1681988267.705543000]: This robot has a joint named "base_plane__ArmBase" which is not in the gazebo model.
    [FATAL] [1681988267.705556000]: Could not initialize robot simulation interface

…

    [WARN] [1681988296.560628, 28.000000]: Controller Spawner couldn't find the expected controller_manager ROS interface.
    [WARN] [1681988296.561593, 28.001000]: Controller Spawner couldn't find the expected controller_manager ROS interface.

The gazebo_ros_controller plugin doesn’t load. I have a similar arm which I have set up exactly the same way and that works expectedly whereas this one just falls down in the gazebo.

I have found similar problems in this forum and over the internet, but none of them works.

Here is the github repository for both the robots. mybot is the one that runs successfully.

GitHub
TIA.

[tanvir.taaha]

I have asked this question on the official ros answers site and so many other forums unfortunately no one has replied after weeks. Any guidelines on even how to debug problems like this will be helpful.

I have also watched youtube tutorials of The Contruct regarding similar topics but no luck.

[balajigunasekeran22]

Hi Tanvir,

Could you share your Terminal screen to fully understand your issue ?.

-BG

[tanvir.taaha]

Sorry I couldn’t add more than one media. Above one is the important (I guess!). But the rest are here.

[tanvir.taaha]

I found the solution.

Turns out

This robot has a joint named "base_plane__ArmBase" which is not in the gazebo model.

This message was the key. I have set <transmission> tag for all the joints in my URDF. But gazebo treats every links that have fixed joint with each other as a single rigid body. Thus base_plane__base_bar & base_bar__ArmBase joints were not present in the robot model. So gazebo couldn’t figure out where to set the hardware interface. This is why the simulation interface was not running.
So I removed the <transmission> tag for both of this joints and it runs expectedly.