[RQT-JTC] Allow incomplete joint limits

[christophfroehlich]

Description

For faster review, I manually cherry-picked the changes regarding joint-limits from #1131
With #2254 and #2281 some of the changes were applied already, and the rest was not possible to be directly merged due to conflicts.
Also, the urdf_parser_py does not allow a <limit> tag without velocity limits, so I removed the respective fallback section.

Is this user-facing behavior change?

yes, but instead of crashing it should now gracefully try to do something useful and give warnings.

Did you use Generative AI?

GPT Codex 5.3

[codecov]

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 78.08219% with 16 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ Project coverage is 86.70%. Comparing base (2da9e91) to head (40ee696).

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
...ajectory_controller/joint_trajectory_controller.py	0.00%	12 Missing ⚠️
...ajectory_controller/test/test_joint_limits_urdf.py	93.87%	3 Missing ⚠️
...t_joint_trajectory_controller/joint_limits_urdf.py	91.66%	1 Missing ⚠️

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##           master    #2404      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   86.71%   86.70%   -0.01%     
==========================================
  Files         148      148              
  Lines       15832    15898      +66     
  Branches     1347     1353       +6     
==========================================
+ Hits        13728    13784      +56     
- Misses       1609     1618       +9     
- Partials      495      496       +1     

Flag	Coverage Δ
unittests	86.70% <78.08%> (-0.01%)	⬇️

Flags with carried forward coverage won't be shown. Click here to find out more.

Files with missing lines	Coverage Δ
...t_joint_trajectory_controller/joint_limits_urdf.py	78.48% <91.66%> (+3.11%)	⬆️
...ajectory_controller/test/test_joint_limits_urdf.py	97.84% <93.87%> (-2.16%)	⬇️
...ajectory_controller/joint_trajectory_controller.py	37.57% <0.00%> (-0.42%)	⬇️

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[christophfroehlich]

@lakhmanisahil I splitted the original PR, this one here is faster to review. As you have refactored the module recently, maybe you can have a quick look if that makes sense? Thank you!

[lakhmanisahil]

@lakhmanisahil I splitted the original PR, this one here is faster to review. As you have refactored the module recently, maybe you can have a quick look if that makes sense? Thank you!

Hello, I tested it on Lyrical: colcon test passes 28/28, including the 6 new cases, and the parser behaves as expected in both strict and tolerant modes. The new default allow_incomplete_joints=False preserves the existing behavior.

[christophfroehlich]

@MarqRazz the position limits for continuous joints were not changed here. The parser raises an exception if no velocity limit is set, so I hope the position limit is a useful default here?

I realize now before this PR the continuous joints were treated like revolute ones, but with the following lines they will be deactivated:
https://github.com/ros-controls/ros2_controllers/pull/2404/changes#diff-1fe0d2fd8e18b20c3df84a8d9060e7661230e1f8aa0329f7d6f53aa8ce14dedaR291

I think we should change that and set has_position_limits true for continuous joints (the variable name does not fit well, but the behavior remains the same).

What do you think?

[MarqRazz]

Ya we could set has_position_limits = True here. We are assigning limit values even though it doesn't have any and the RQT widget doesn't support jogging a joint beyond those values currently so we might as well be consistent.

[christophfroehlich]

done

[christophfroehlich]

btw urdf_parser from robot_state_publisher will never run without a limit tag

[robot_state_publisher-2] Error:   Joint [joint1] is of type REVOLUTE but it does not specify limits
[robot_state_publisher-2]          at line 607 in ./urdf_parser/src/joint.cpp
[robot_state_publisher-2] Error:   joint xml is not initialized correctly
[robot_state_publisher-2]          at line 243 in ./urdf_parser/src/model.cpp
[robot_state_publisher-2] [WARN] [1781641700.051294975] [urdf]: Failed to parse robot description using: urdf_xml_parser/URDFXMLParser
[robot_state_publisher-2] 
[robot_state_publisher-2] terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::runtime_error'
[robot_state_publisher-2]   what():  Unable to initialize urdf::model from robot description

but it seems that urdf_parser_py allows this, see test_missing_limit_tag_for_unrequired_joint_skipped_silently