Visualization
Visualization Troubleshooting#
Robot not visible in RViz#
Symptom: RViz shows no robot model.
Cause: Either robot_state_publisher is not running or the Fixed Frame in RViz is set incorrectly.
Fix: Confirm robot_state_publisher is running:
Set Fixed Frame to base_footprint in RViz.
Wheel links do not appear in RViz#
Symptom: The chassis and all fixed-joint frames display correctly, but wheel links are missing.
Cause: This is expected when only the description package is running standalone. robot_state_publisher requires live /joint_states messages to compute wheel TF transforms. The description launch file does not start a joint state publisher.
Workaround: Run joint_state_publisher_gui for manual testing, or bring up the full simulation or hardware stack that publishes /joint_states via the controller manager.