Moveit and Rviz
In ROS, the notion of a URDF is very important. These files define all of the properties of a certain robot and it is the format accepted by almost all major ROS packages. They are defined in XML format.
Tutorials for building URDFs can be found here: http://wiki.ros.org/urdf/Tutorials
URDFs are more easily made using xacro files. These are also XML files with the important difference that xacro files allows you to write macros. A macro allows you to repeat bits of XML in order to make the file more compact. A xacro interpreter then reads the files and outputs the full URDF text.
URDFs of robotic arms are the main input to the MoveIt package.
Launch the urdf file for the arm
roslaunch uvic_rover display.launch model:='$(find uvic_rover)/rover_description/UVicArm.urdf'
This also works to launch the arm for now, since the default in the file is set to UVicArm.urdf
roslaunch uvic_rover display.launch