Gazebo Physics Engine Wrapper
Current PR2 simulation is implemented through the Gazebo Project. Gazebo is a simulation interface wrapper around the physics engine (currently ODE) under the Player Project.
Simulation World
Simulated world environments can be found in directory worlds under the ros package gazebo_worlds.
Simulating Robots
We use URDF (uniform robot description format) to define objects and robots in simulation.
pr2_description contains the xacro-lized (an XML macro language) urdf definitions for the PR2 robot.
ROS Simulation Interface
pr2_gazebo_plugins supports following functionalities on the PR2 robot:
- Operating transparency between simulation and the actual hardware at actuators level.
- Physics simulation of kinematics assumes:
- exact torque production at actuated joints, i.e. torque constants are exact.
- explicit joint damping applied, i.e. damping force = damping coefficient times joint velocity.
- currently, joint friction, efficiency and motor inertias are not modeled.
See ROS-Gazebo plugins for more details on Gazebo's ROS interface, and on how to extend Gazebo's functionality