I have created a URDF file for a four-wheel-drive vehicle and am beginning
to use it with Gazebo. Each shock absorber is a prismatic joint. Simulating
the damping of a shock is easy; just set the joint's damping factor in a
dynamics block. However, I don't know how to simulate the spring component
of a shock. My only idea so far is to write a ROS node that subscribes to
the joint's position topic. The node's loop gets the position, computes a
force via Hooke's law, then applies a corresponding wrench to the joint. Is
there a better way to simulate a spring in Gazebo? It seems that someone
would have needed to simulate a shock absorber by now, but my searches
didn't turn up any examples.
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Jim Rothrock | jimrothrock52@gmail.com
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