Digital-twin Gazebo simulation of a Franka Emika Panda arm mounted on a custom aluminium-profile base
panda_base_sim is a fully featured ROS Noetic package that reproduces a lab-built Panda workstation in simulation.
It lets you design, tune and verify high-moment manipulation controllers entirely in software before touching real hardware at the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (TUM-MIRMI).
Built a modular Gazebo digital twin of a Franka Emika Panda arm on a custom aluminium base to validate high-moment manipulation controllers safely and in real time.
| Area | What you get |
|---|---|
| Gazebo 11 simulation | Rigid base + Panda arm + FT-sensor stub with collisions, visuals & accurate inertias |
| Modular URDF/Xacro | Cleanly separated common, base, arm and sensor macros for rapid reuse |
| Pre-configured controllers | Joint-position, joint-effort, trajectory and Cartesian-impedance stacks with tuned PID gains |
| Interactive RViz tele-op | interactive_marker.py streams a 6-DOF equilibrium-pose marker at 200 Hz, clamped to safe limits |
| One-command launch | roslaunch panda_base_sim panda_base_sim.launch starts Gazebo, controllers and RViz ready to go |
| Open template | Public MIT-licensed code for anyone building Panda-based manipulation experiments |
- Enabled 100 % of controller tuning and safety checks to be completed in simulation—zero risky on-robot trials.
- Runs at real-time (≈ 1 × wall-clock) speed on a mid-tier desktop (≥ 60 FPS in Gazebo with full controller stack).
- Adopted by three MIRMI researchers as the baseline for force-torque sensor scaling studies.
- Publicly released on GitHub for the wider robotics community.
| Requirement | Notes |
|---|---|
| OS | Ubuntu 20.04 (tested) or newer |
| ROS | ROS Noetic with gazebo_ros, franka_ros, interactive_markers |
| Build tools | catkin_make or colcon |
| Franka driver | Needed for Panda controllers & meshes (franka_ros / franka_gazebo) |
| CAD | SolidWorks (used to create base meshes & inertias) – only if you wish to modify hardware model |
# 1 – Clone into your catkin workspace
cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/yunusdanabas/panda_base_sim.git
# 2 – Install all dependencies
cd ~/catkin_ws
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y
# 3 – Build and source
catkin_make # or: colcon build
source devel/setup.bash| Purpose | Command |
|---|---|
| Full Gazebo world + controllers + RViz | roslaunch panda_base_sim panda_base_sim.launch |
| Gazebo only (static base + arm) | roslaunch panda_base_sim onlybase_gazebo.launch |
Once running, grab the Equilibrium Pose marker in RViz to command the Cartesian-impedance controller, or publish your own target poses:
# Example: publish a custom equilibrium pose
rostopic pub /equilibrium_pose geometry_msgs/PoseStamped ...panda_base_sim/
├── config/ # controller & hardware YAMLs
├── launch/ # Gazebo and RViz launch files
├── meshes/ # STL/DAE meshes (SolidWorks-derived)
├── robots/ # common, base, arm & sensor Xacros
├── scripts/ # interactive_marker.py (Python 3)
├── urdf/ # generated/published URDFs
├── pdf/ # mechanical drawings & diagrams
├── *.png # renders & screenshots
├── CMakeLists.txt
└── package.xml
| Simulation (RViz + Gazebo) | Front Render |
|---|---|
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| Isometric View | Side View |
|---|---|
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- Developed during a Forschungspraxis internship at TUM-MIRMI.
- Built on the excellent Franka ROS drivers and Gazebo plugins.
- Huge thanks to the ROS & open-source community.
Released under the MIT License – see the LICENSE file.
Feel free to use, modify and share; pull-requests welcome!