Make ROS 2 compatible support packages available (URDF, etc)

[gavanderhoorn]

We have a set of support packages available over at gavanderhoorn/motoman@ros2.

More will be added in the future, and the changes will be merged upstream.

Note these support packages still use the old joint name convention from MotoROS1 (ie: joint_l_s, etc). This is no longer needed with MotoROS2, and the names will be changed to the more generic joint_1, joint_2, etc.

See also Can names of joints be changed? in the FAQ.

[gavanderhoorn]

I've pinned this to increase visibility.

[marip8]

Do you think it would be possible to support both ROS1 and ROS2 in a revised support package repository? It seems like this should be possible with a tool like ros_industrial_cmake_boilerplate to set up the packages independent of catkin and ament and to install artifacts to the correct locations. It would be nice not to have two equivalent but separate repositories to maintain

[gavanderhoorn]

Yes, that should be possible.

I don't believe we need RICB for that though. In the end, I believe "all" that would be needed would be a marker for the resource index, perhaps some meta-data for colcon and indeed installing things in the correct places.

For support pkgs specifically though there is one thing that we'd need to check additionally: IIRC, package:// URIs are not supported everywhere, or at least not in Gazebo/gazebo_ros2_control. We do use those, so unless one of the (currently) known work-arounds works for us as well, that might prevent a ROS1-ROS2 combined approach.

[gavanderhoorn]

Related discussion: ros-industrial/motoman#584.

[gavanderhoorn]

As a heads up: I intend to update gavanderhoorn/motoman@ros2 soon.

It's currently behind kinetic-devel of upstream motoman and a set of PRs is also slated to get merged there which will have to be migrated as well.

Due to the way the fork/branch works, this update will be in the form of a force-push, meaning all existing clones will have to reset their checkouts.

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Edit: current state of the update: gavanderhoorn/motoman@ros2_rebased_and_cleaned.