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Get Latest URDF Robot Model for Kinova Gen3 Robot

By default, the loadrobot function uses Version 10 of the Unified Robot Description Format (URDF) file to construct the rigid body tree model for Kinova® Gen3 robot. The source URDF information of a particular rigid body tree model can be accessed using the following set of commands in MATLAB®: 

[gen3Model, robotData]=loadrobot('kinovaGen3')
URDFSource = robotData.Source

An updated version of the URDF file is available for the Gen3 robot. Use the additional version argument to use Version 12, associated with release 2.2.1 for the Gen3 robot.

[gen3Model, robotData]=loadrobot('kinovaGen3','Version',2);
URDFSource = robotData.Source

Any different URDF version can be imported in MATLAB using importrobot function. For example, to import Version 12 of URDF robot model of Kinova Gen3 robot for further algorithm development:

  1. Download the gen3.xacro file corresponding to your version of the Gen3 robot from Kinova’s ROS Kortex Github repository.

    • The latest repository can be found here: https://github.com/kinovarobotics/ros_kortex

    • As of July 2021, the newest version is Version 12, associated with release 2.2.1. This is available in this repository. By default, the loadrobot function uses Version 10, associated with release 1.1.4, which has broader joint limits and slightly different inertial terms than the newer version.

  2. Convert the downloaded XACRO file to URDF by using the following command. This step requires a valid installation of ROS.

    rosrun xacro xacro --inorder -o gen3.urdf gen3.urdf.xacro

  3. Use the generated URDF file to construct the rigid body tree model in MATLAB:

    robot = importrobot('gen3.urdf')