URDF Activity

• Clone https://github.com/m-elwin/me495_urdf.git
• See how the robot moves in rviz.
• Change the launchfile so it no longer loads the rviz configuration.
  • Then, when rviz loads, set it up to see the robot.
• Using the information in the URDF tutorial
  • NOTE Omit the --inorder argument when invoking xacro, the wiki has outdated information.
• Rename slidebot.urdf to slidebot.urdf.xacro (mv slidebot.urdf slidebot.urdf.xacro)
• Modify it so that it is a valid xacro file (adding xmlns:xacro="http://wiki.ros.org/wiki/xacro" to the robot tag) and modify the launchfile to load the xacro file.
• Create a parameter called base_radius and use it as the radius of the base sphere
  • Declare this directly as a xacro:property
• Make the length of the arm 10 times the radius of the base sphere
• Using the information here xacro YAML load the base_radius from a yaml file instead of declaring it directly in the xacro file.
• Use a xacro:macro to add a link to the arm that is the same as the current arm link but on the opposite side of the body

Here is what I did for today's example.

mkdir -p ws/src
cd ws/src
git clone https://github.com/jackal/jackal.git
cd ws
catkin_make
xacro src/jackal/jackal_description/urdf/jackal.urdf.xacro > jackal.urdf
roslaunch urdf_tutorial display.launch model:=jackal.urdf