Loading Robot into Slicer

[lassoan (Andras Lasso)]

@Jeff_Boker

Basically I want to just drag and drop a file and instead of using the mouse and sliders to adjust the joint values, I want to do this automatically using OpenIGTLink.

Slicer can do exactly this. The file that you drag-and-drop is a Slicer scene file that contains models, transforms, and OpenIGTLink configuration.

@Jeff_Boker

I am a little confused about converting my urdf file into the mrb file where the joint values can be controlled with the sliders as you do in the video. So I can convert the urdf into surface meshes, but how will slicer know all the joints and how to set the sliders to actuate the joints?

You can build the transform tree from information in the urdf file. To make this very easy, I’ve implemented an automatic importer script. You can download it from here:

https://gist.github.com/lassoan/e174e853cd78ad93a1cd54b32debdac8

The script does not support all possible features (e.g., I’ve only added “revolute” joint types), but can be easily extended as needed.

All you need is to copy-paste the script into Slicer’s Python console in a recent Slicer Preview Release (Slicer-5.7.x; Slicer Stable Release is not compatible, as it does not support selective display of transform rotation handles):