Tutorial: Adding a New Type of Robot to Quad SDK

Users can add a new robot to Quad-SDK by adding a number of files describing their robot. Unitree A1 and Ghost Spirit 40 are currently supported and can be used as examples when adding a new robot.

In the /quad_simulator package, modify the following:

• Add a /quad_simulator/<robot_name>_description folder which contains sdf and urdf to be loaded by Gazebo and RBDL. To enable the quadruped to work with the existing codes, the name of joints and links should be in the order of:

• body

• 8 - hip0 - 0 - upper0 - 1 - lower0 - jtoe0 - toe0

• 9 - hip1 - 2 - upper1 - 3 - lower1 - jtoe1 - toe1

• 10 - hip2 - 4 - upper2 - 5 - lower2 - jtoe2 - toe2

• 11 - hip3 - 6 - upper3 - 7 - lower3 - jtoe3 - toe3

where 0-11 are actuator joints and jtoe<0-3> are fixed joints. All the rest are links. The leg is in the sequence of: front left, rear left, front right and rear right. The name of collision plugin for toes have to be toe<0-3>_collision.

We recommend to change xacro files and generate the sdf and urdf through

rosrun xacro xacro --inorder -o urdf/<robot_name>.urdf xacro/robot.xacro DEBUG:=false
gz sdf -p urdf/<robot_name>.urdf > sdf_mesh/<robot_name>.sdf

In the /quad_utils package, modify the following:

• Add a /quad_utils/config/<robot_name>.yaml file.

Most launch files default to robot_type:=spirit. When calling any launch file with robot_type as an argument, include: robot_type:=<robot_name>