Creating our first URDF model

After learning about URDF and its important tags, we can start some basic modeling using URDF. The first robot mechanism that we are going to design is a pan and tilt mechanism as shown in the following figure.

There are three links and two joints in this mechanism. The base link is static, in which all other links are mounted. The first joint can pan on its axis and the second link is mounted on the first link and it can tilt on its axis. The two joints in this system are of a revolute type.

Creating our first URDF model

Figure 4 : Visualization of a pan and tilt mechanism in RViz

Let's see the URDF code of this mechanism. Navigate to chapter_2_code/mastering_ros_robot_description_pkg/urdf ...

Get Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.