Description of the weeding robot in URDF format using xacro.
The urdf folder contains the xacro files of the robot description. The following command can be used to generate the URDF file:
$ xacro urdf/weed_robot.xacro > weed_robot.urdf
The configuration file config/weed_robot.yaml specifies the mass and dimensions of each part of the robot. With this information, the moment of inertia matrix is calculated for each part. Additionally, the coefficients kp (contact stiffness), kd (damping) and mu (friction coefficients) for the robot wheels are specified.
The meshes folder contains 3D meshes in STL format. Those with the heavy suffix have higher definition. By default, the ones without this suffix are used. For the solar panels part there is a mesh in COLLADA format meshes/panels.dae that adds texture.
The rviz folder contains different RViz configurations for viewing the robot from different angles.
To visualize the robot model with RViz use launch/rviz.launch with the following arguments:
- meshes
- true: generates the URDF file using STL and DAE meshes for the visual model and simple geometric shapes for the collision model.
- false: generates the URDF file using simple geometric shapes for both the visual and collision models (useful to verify the collision model).
- config: this parameter indicates the configuration file for rviz (by default it uses normal, but you can configure bottom and top for other views).
For example:
$ roslaunch launch/rviz.launch meshes:=true config:=normal