Comment by Weasfas for I am building my own 4WD model and I am trying to implement 4 velocity controllers (one for each motor). The issue arises when I execute my launch file (which contains the controller_spawner node), the transforms between the base_link and the 4 wheels are non-existent. I have tried the joint_state_publisher node with the GUI (instead of the controller_spawner) and it works. However when I implement the controller_spawner node, the transforms disappear. I have made sure to download all necessary packages for ros_control. I have used the ros_control plugin in my URDF and even made sure the namespaces are all correct in the YAML, URDF and launch file. Every time I execute the launch file, I get the error: "Controller Spawner couldn't find the expected controller_manager ROS interface."Then I get the error within Rviz that there are no transforms between the base_link and the wheels. When I run rospack list | grep control I get: control_msgs /opt/ros/melodic/share/control_msgs control_toolbox /opt/ros/melodic/share/control_toolbox controller_interface /opt/ros/melodic/share/controller_interface controller_manager /opt/ros/melodic/share/controller_manager controller_manager_msgs /opt/ros/melodic/share/controller_manager_msgs diff_drive_controller /opt/ros/melodic/share/diff_drive_controller effort_controllers /opt/ros/melodic/share/effort_controllers force_torque_sensor_controller /opt/ros/melodic/share/force_torque_sensor_controller forward_command_controller /opt/ros/melodic/share/forward_command_controller gazebo_ros_control /opt/ros/melodic/share/gazebo_ros_control gripper_action_controller /opt/ros/melodic/share/gripper_action_controller imu_sensor_controller /opt/ros/melodic/share/imu_sensor_controller joint_state_controller /opt/ros/melodic/share/joint_state_controller joint_trajectory_controller /opt/ros/melodic/share/joint_trajectory_controller position_controllers /opt/ros/melodic/share/position_controllers velocity_controllers /opt/ros/melodic/share/velocity_controllers My launch file is: <launch> <!--Load the URDF file --> <param name="robot_description" command="cat $(find monsterborg_description)/urdf/monsterborg.urdf"/> <!-- Launch the robot_state_publisher to broadcast transforms to '/tf' --> <node name="robot_state_publisher" pkg="robot_state_publisher" type="robot_state_publisher" output="screen"> <!-- remap from="/joint_states" to="/monsterborg/joint_states"/--> </node> <!-- Load the configuration of the joint controllers --> <rosparam file='$(find monsterborg_description)/config/monsterborg_controllers.yaml' command='load'/> <!-- Load the joint controllers --> <node name='controller_spawner' pkg='controller_manager' type='spawner' respawn='false' output='screen' ns='/monsterborg' args='rf_wheel_velocity_controller rb_wheel_velocity_controller lf_wheel_velocity_controller lb_wheel_velocity_controller joint_state_controller'/> <!-- Loads the 'world' static frame --> <node pkg='tf' type='static_transform_publisher' name='world_frame' args='0 0 0 0 0 0 /world /base_link 100'/> <!-- Open Rviz with specific configuration --> <node name="rviz" pkg="rviz" type="rviz" args="-d $(find monsterborg_description)/rviz_config/monsterborg.rviz"/> </launch> My YAML: monsterborg: joint_state_controller: type: joint_state_controller/JointStateController publish_rate: 50 rf_wheel_velocity_controller: type: effort_controllers/JointVelocityController joint: base_to_rf_wheel pid: {p: 1.0, i: 1.0, d: 1.0} lf_wheel_velocity_controller: type: effort_controllers/JointVelocityController joint: base_to_lf_wheel pid: {p: 1.0, i: 1.0, d: 1.0} rb_wheel_velocity_controller: type: effort_controllers/JointVelocityController joint: base_to_rb_wheel pid: {p: 1.0, i: 1.0, d: 1.0} lb_wheel_velocity_controller: type: effort_controllers/JointVelocityController joint: base_to_lb_wheel pid: {p: 1.0, i: 1.0, d: 1.0} Here is a small snippet of the URDF file for the base_link, one wheel and motor: <robot name="monsterborg"><link name="base_link"> <visual> <origin xyz="0 0 0 ...(more)

Ok, to be more precise. The standard mobile robot tf frames should be: World->Map->Odom->Base_footprint->Base_link I think the fact that the robot is not moving in Rviz but Gazebo is because you are not publishing a tf between your odom and the `base_link`/`base_footprint`. The only thing that rviz does is reading from the `/tf` topic and compute the relative position of each link with respect the fixed frame; but if you are only publishing a static transform Rviz does not know if the robot moved so what you need is something to publish the tf between your `base_link`/`base_footprint` and your robot odometry to reflect that the robot is moving. You can check odom tf broadcaster [here](http://wiki.ros.org/tf/Tutorials/Writing%20a%20tf%20broadcaster%20%28C%2B%2B%29). But that can be done with multiple tools like `AMCL`, `robot_localization` or even a model [plugin](http://gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=plugins_model&cat=write_plugin) since you are working with Gazebo.