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You're reading from  Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming

Product typeBook
Published inDec 2015
Reading LevelIntermediate
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781783551798
Edition1st Edition
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Author (1)
Lentin Joseph
Lentin Joseph
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Lentin Joseph

Lentin Joseph is an author and robotics entrepreneur from India. He runs a robotics software company called Qbotics Labs in India. He has 7 years of experience in the robotics domain primarily in ROS, OpenCV, and PCL. He has authored four books in ROS, namely, Learning Robotics using Python, Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming, ROS Robotics Projects, and Robot Operating System for Absolute Beginners. He is currently pursuing his master's in Robotics from India and is also doing research at Robotics Institute, CMU, USA.
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Understanding robot modeling using xacro


The flexibility of URDF reduces when we work with complex robot models. Some of the main features that URDF is missing are the simplicity, reusability, modularity, and programmability.

If someone wants to reuse a URDF block ten times in his robot description, he can copy and paste the block ten times. If there is an option to use this code block and make multiple copies with different settings, it will be very useful while creating the robot description.

The URDF is single file and we can't include other URDF files inside it. This reduces the modular nature of the code. All code should be in a single file, which reduces the code simplicity too.

Also, if there is some programmability, such as adding variable, constants, mathematical expressions, conditional statement, and so on, in the description language, it will be more user friendly.

The robot modeling using xacro meets all these conditions and some of the main features of xacro are as follows:

  • Simplify...

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Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming
Published in: Dec 2015Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781783551798

Author (1)

author image
Lentin Joseph

Lentin Joseph is an author and robotics entrepreneur from India. He runs a robotics software company called Qbotics Labs in India. He has 7 years of experience in the robotics domain primarily in ROS, OpenCV, and PCL. He has authored four books in ROS, namely, Learning Robotics using Python, Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming, ROS Robotics Projects, and Robot Operating System for Absolute Beginners. He is currently pursuing his master's in Robotics from India and is also doing research at Robotics Institute, CMU, USA.
Read more about Lentin Joseph