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<div style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;">Hello, everybody. I've only started to use ROS last week as part of my internship. I'm using Gazebo 2.2.2 in conjunction with ROS Indigo and Ubuntu 14.04 'Trusty'. I was tasked to research a way to write a simple plugin
that could control a robot. I was told that I should aim for a plugin that causes the robot to move by actually controlling its actuator motor and not simply moving the model's joints. I've searched a ways to write a plugin for manipulating the acutator, but
no luck with a specific example yet. </div>
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<div style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;">Here's what I know so far:</div>
<div style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;">The stack ros_control has something to do with using actuators and works best with URDF.</div>
<div style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;">URDF files have the <actuator> tag.<br>
</div>
<div style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;">None of the default models included in Gazebo have actuators, only joints.</div>
<div style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;">The gazebosim.org tutorial page does not contain instructions for writing plugins for actuators, only world, system, model, and sensors.<br>
</div>
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<div style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;">What I don't know:</div>
<div style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;">Can I use actuators in an .sdf file?<br>
What does ros_controller (NOT ros_control) actually do? The ROS wiki has little information on this stack.<br>
Is it true that it's better to use URDF rather than SDF for actuators? Especially since the tutorial on the Gazebo wiki specifies the use of URDF.<br>
</div>
<div style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;"><strong>What exactly is the format of an actuator configuration file (if it's possible)?</strong></div>
<div style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;"><strong>Is it actually possible to write a plugin that manipulates the actuators instead of the model itself or the joints?</strong></div>
<div style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;"><br>
</div>
<div style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0;">Any help would be greatly appreciated. If anyone needs clarification on some of the things I said, feel free to ask. I'll do my best to make things clear.</div>
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