Robotics Extension

[wlawler45]

Hello, I am a really new user to glTF, I work with a robotics group at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and we were hoping to make use of glTF as a robot description format because of all the numerous advantages it has over other 3d object file description methods, we were looking to make an extension modeled after URDF data format and a converter to convert existing URDF data into glTF potentially. We would mainly be concerned with adding parameters for robot links, relevant physics values for different joints and joint motion types. Is this a reasonable extension or does something like this already exist?

[dfreiberger]

This may be related to https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF/issues/1135, specifically the discussion around joints.

I am an interested observer to this conversation, it would be nice to have a vendor-neutral format for exporting joint information that is exported directly from CAD software, (e.g. using plugins like http://wiki.ros.org/sw_urdf_exporter, or even intelligently converting assembly mates to joints).

[emackey]

@wlawler45 This sounds pretty exciting! Don't get stuck in the quagmire of #1135, that's for a different purpose (game physics) and it should remain separate from this.

There's not much formal process beyond selecting a name for the extension with a prefix. Let us know if Rensselaer wants an RPI_ prefix added to the list. Ideally any custom binary data would be stored in a typical glTF way, such as with accessors. Take a look at some of the existing extensions for 2.0 to see if there's one that might make a good starting template.

[mikedh]

That would be neat! I wrote an unimplemented draft a while ago for one possible approach.

[Fahmina]

Hey @wlawler45 --

Just curious-- did you end up writing a URDF to GLTF converter? I work at a robotics company (Viam) -- We currently represent kinematics in a format that is very similar to URDF, except that it is written in JSON.