Creating a URDF for a Robot

In the previous chapter, we started with an intuitive introduction to TFs, or TransForms. You have seen that TFs are very important; they will be the backbone of almost any ROS application. We concluded by saying that in order to generate TFs for a robot, you need to create a Unified Robot Description Format (URDF) file.

Basically, a URDF file will contain a description of all the elements of a robot. You will define each link (rigid part) of the robot. Then, to create relationships between the links, you will add some joints, which will be used to generate the TFs.

To write the content of a URDF, we will use XML. As you develop the URDF, you will be able to visualize it with RViz. This will be very helpful to see whether the links and joints/TFs are correct. We will also improve the URDF file and make it more dynamic with an additional tool named Xacro.

So, in this chapter, we are going to start the project for Part 3, with the URDF for a robot...