Hands-On ROS for Robotics Programming

URDF robot body

A <link> element, as defined in the URDF XML specification (http://wiki.ros.org/urdf/XML/link), defines a rigid body with inertia, visual features, and collision properties. In this chapter, we will introduce <visual>. We will leave <inertia> and <collision> for later in this book since these properties are only required when performing physics simulation with Gazebo (see Chapter 5, Simulating Robot Behavior with Gazebo).

The <visual> tag describes the visual appearance of the part. Don't confuse this with the <collision> tag, as that defines the volume to be considered for interference or crash calculation. Often, both may define different volumes, although it is very common that they are in agreement.

Why should they be ...