[FEATURE]: Read parameters from a robot description (URDF)

[evan-palmer]

Feature Type

Adding new functionality

Problem Description

User's currently need to manually provide hydrodynamic parameters which is ok if you are using a configuration file. But this process is tedious and is a bit of an eye-sore.

Feature Description

Implement a parser capable of parsing hydrodynamic parameters from a robot's URDF file. This would fit in with the more traditional robotics modeling approach (using URDF instead of a configuration file) and would be much easier to use.

Alternative Solutions

You could instead write just a generic parser, which would be fine, but ultimately I think that supporting URDF configurations specifically should be a higher priority.

Additional Context

SDFormat provides something similar for Gazebo. It might be useful to provide support for that format of parameters to avoid forcing users to duplicate things.

[evan-palmer]

I recently found out that SDF files have started to get better support in ROS 2, and with the existing integration of hydrodynamics into Gazebo, I think it would be better to implement an SDF parser instead of a URDF parser.

[arjo129]

Hey @evan-palmer just came across this repo! Nice to see peolpe playing around with hydrodynamics. Was wondering if you've had a look at http://sdformat.org/spec?ver=1.11&elem=link#inertial_fluid_added_mass . You don't need to implement a parser from scratch but can just depend on libSDFormat.

[evan-palmer]

Hey @arjo129! Thank you for sharing this. I'm glad to see that there is already some support for parsing hydrodynamics! When I wrote this issue, I was thinking of the implementation that you and Carlos put together for the VRX hydrodynamics plugin here