Using MATLAB in ROS

Import robot model in MATLAB

MATLAB can import a rigid tree model from the URDF file. See here for documentation.

To generate URDF file from xacro file, use the following command (see here for reference)

rosrun xacro xacro --inorder file.xacro > new.urdf

Note that the MATLAB doesn't support COLLADA mesh file, we need to convert to stl file. This can be done using the online tool: https://products.aspose.app/3d/conversion/dae-to-stl. The $(find foo) command used to find ROS package file location is not supported, so we need to replace them with an explicit directory.

Once the model is imported in MATLAB, we can easily create inverse kinematics solver, inverse dynamics solver and many more using Robotics System Toolbox. See here for a list of available functions.

Robotics System Toolbox

• Coordinate Transformations in Robotics
• Inverse Kinematics, solver details
• Forward Kinematics

ROS Toolbox