Introduction

Quadrupeds have steadily become a more standard technology in robotic field. This is reflected by the increase in universities with quadruped as well as more DIY quadrupeds being created by the general population. Unfortunately, the procedure for the creation of quadrupeds is still not quite standardized. In this work, I attempt to outline a procedure to generating a robot description model of the quadruped and incorporate a baseline quadruped controller from champ such that it generalizes to any quadruped that contains a hip, upper leg link, and lower link component.

General Procedure

Since I take the perspective of a mechanical engineer, the most natural way of creating a quadruped model is through the usage of Solidworks and the URDF Exporter Tool. Although, if you want to spend some time to learn a more traditional way of creating unified robot description files (URDF), use PHOBOS. To create a baseline controller that is compatible with your quadruped model, follow conventional format specified in the champ setup assistant for the champ controller. However, I do want to note some difficulties that one may encounter when creating a model that is compatible with your model:

• When creating components for your quadruped, ensure that each part file coordinate axes corresponds to Y in the vertical direction and X to the left. (picture).
• For simplicity, ensure that the origin of your linkages corresponds to the joints position that connect your quadruped.
• Creating .obj files with solidworks is not a default option. To do this, you can use this free Solidworks obj exporter plugin.
• Add transmission tags to URDF model generated by solidworks to enable control in Gazebo

Generation of Pupperv2 quadruped w/ Champ Baseline Controllers