Visualizing the 3D robot model in RViz

After designing the URDF, we can view it on RViz. We can create a view_demo.launch launch file and put the following code into the launch folder. Navigate to the mastering_ros_robot_description_pkg/launch directory for the code:

<launch> 
  <arg name="model" /> 
  <param name="robot_description" textfile="$(find mastering_ros_robot_description_pkg)/urdf/pan_tilt.urdf" /> 
  <param name="use_gui" value="true"/> 
  <node name="joint_state_publisher" pkg="joint_state_publisher" type="joint_state_publisher" /> 
  <node name="robot_state_publisher" pkg="robot_state_publisher" type="state_publisher" /> 
  <node name="rviz" pkg="rviz" type="rviz" args="-d $(find mastering_ros_robot_description_pkg)/urdf.rviz" required="true" /> 
</launch> 

We can launch the model using the following command:

$ roslaunch mastering_ros_robot_description_pkg view_demo.launch  

If everything works fine, we will get a pan-and-tilt mechanism in RViz, as shown here: