Skip to main content

URDF Robot Modeling

What is URDF?​

The Unified Robot Description Format (URDF) is an XML format for describing the physical structure of a robot. It represents the robot as a kinematic tree of links (rigid bodies) connected by joints (revolute, prismatic, fixed, etc.).

  • Link: Defines the physical and visual properties of a segment of the robot (e.g., mass, inertia, shape, color).
  • Joint: Defines how two links are connected and their relative motion (e.g., rotation, translation).

Building a Humanoid Torso​

We will create a simple URDF for a humanoid torso.

Code​

See src/ros2_foundations/urdf/humanoid.urdf

Visualizing with RViz2​

Once the URDF is created, we can visualize it using RViz2.