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When I encountered the same problem, I wrote a ROS package that essentially does what Oscar Lima suggested: It reads ROS joint state messages and transforms them into call to the service /gazebo/set_model_configuration. In this way, you can visualize the robot configuration without having to tune any controllers.

The package is well documented and available on GitHub.

When I encountered Yes, it is possible! In order to control your robot in Gazebo without setting up controllers, you have to follow these steps:

1. Convert your robot to a Gazebo actor. An actor is like a model, but it is not affected by Gazebo's physics engine. To this end, convert your URDF file to SDF and then replace the same problem, I wrote <model> tag by <actor>.
2. Write a Gazebo plugin that listens to ROS package that essentially does what Oscar Lima suggested: It reads ROS joint state messages transformations and transforms them into call sets the poses of the actor links accordingly.
3. Include a reference to your plugin in the service /gazebo/set_model_configuration. In this way, SDF.
4. Upload the SDF to Gazebo.

You can do all the steps yourself, or you can visualize download the robot configuration without having gazebo_tf_injector package, which contains both the Gazebo plugin and a script to tune any controllers.convert your URDF to an actor SDF. It also comes with lots of documentation and a ready-to-use example, which should get you started quickly:

The package is well documented and available on GitHub.

Yes, it is possible! In order to control your robot in Gazebo without setting up controllers, you have to follow these steps:

1. Convert your robot to a Gazebo actor. An actor is like a model, but it model that is not affected by Gazebo's physics engine. To this end, convert your URDF file to SDF and then replace the <model> tag by <actor>.
2. Write a Gazebo plugin that listens to ROS transformations and sets the poses of the actor links accordingly.
3. Include a reference to your plugin in the SDF.
4. Upload the SDF to Gazebo.

You can do all the steps yourself, or you can download the gazebo_tf_injector package, which contains both the Gazebo plugin and a script to convert your URDF to an actor SDF. It also comes with lots of documentation and a ready-to-use example, which should get you started quickly:quickly.