Quality of ROS2 packages #141
Description
Just a List of Quality Issues of ROS2 Packages
ROS2 is supposed to make it easy to prototype and develop robotic solutions. But increasingly I feel that poor implementation has led to unnecessary roadblocks and delays. Here are a few of the many issues I found in the ROS2 packages from Ufactory:
- Lack of Gripper control through ros2_control. I was quite surprised that The gripper is not directly controlled by ros2_control and that the hardware interface only handles the robot joints. This is especially surprising given that both the controllers package and moveit package lead you to believe that it is possible (some places just include the fake hardware interfaces).
- Grippers disabled by default in a hidden config in the xarm_api
- Repository is quite bloated. In an attempt to reduce the size of the overall repository by making launchfiles and URDFs modular across vastly different robot types, the repository has become challenging to adapt to.
- Too many and yet too few arguments. Each launch file accepts 20+ launch arguments, same goes for URDFs, but basic stuff like the position of the two robots in a dual robot description is hard coded, not only in the URDF, but static TF publishers in random launch files.
link_eefis commented out in most URDFs yet, move it servo configs rely on it. I noticed many such issues.- Moveit setup assistant does not work on these robot models. I nailed the problem down to an issue with the stl files for the xarm gripper. One needs to convert them to obj through something like assimp to get the setup assistant to load the model.
Overall I have to say I find these packages unusable as it is for custom development. I would need to set up my own description, hardware interfaces etc to get it working or switch to python sdk.