Simulating the robotic arm with Xtion Pro

Now that we have learned about the camera plugin definition in Gazebo, we can launch the complete simulation using the following command:

$ roslaunch seven_dof_arm_gazebo seven_dof_arm_with_rgbd_world.launch

We can see the robot model with a sensor on the top of the arm, as shown here:

Figure 2: Simulation of seven-DOF arm with Asus Xtion Pro in Gazebo

We can now work with the simulated rgb-d sensor as if it were directly plugged into our computer. So we can check whether it provides the correct image output.

Visualizing the 3D sensor data

After launching the simulation using the preceding command, we can check topics generated by the sensor plugin:

Figure 3: rgb-d image topics generated by Gazebo

Let's view the image data of a 3D vision sensor using the following tool called image_view:

• View the RGB raw image:

$ rosrun image_view image_view image:=/rgbd_camera/rgb/image_raw

• View the IR raw image:

$ rosrun image_view image_view image:=/rgbd_camera/ir/image_raw...