README.md

About

This section describes the edgar.urdf of the EDGAR research vehicle.

URDF

A URDF (Unified Robot Description Format) is a file used to represent the kinematic and dynamic description of a robot. It enables the modeling of robots using joints and links among other attributes.

The edgar.urdf is structured as follows:

1. Robot element:

   • The robot as the main container for the robot description

2. The link elements represent a rigid body in a robot model. In this particular case the links defined in the URDF are:

   Reference frames:

   • base_link
   • rear_axle_center_ground
   • rack_rear_center
   • rear_axle_center

   The respective sensors installed on EDGAR, i.e.:

   • gnss_left
   • imu
   • lidar_ouster_left
   • radar_front_left
   • camera_sr_front_left
   • ...

   Links can also be visualized using geometric features. We use a 3d model for EDGAR (see first section in the edgar.urdf file).

3. The joint elements describe the relative transformation between two links with the origin being the relative position of the child link with respect to the parent link. All joints in the EDGAR URDF are defined as fixed.

You can find an exemplary integration of the EDGAR URDF file and 3d model using the edgar_state_publisher.

For a more detailed tutorial on URDF please refer to http://wiki.ros.org/urdf/Tutorials.