Adding physical and collision properties to a URDF model

Before simulating a robot in a robot simulator, such as Gazebo or CoppeliaSim, we need to define the robot link's physical properties, such as geometry, color, mass, and inertia, as well as the collision properties of the link.

Good robot simulations can be obtained only if the robot dynamic parameters (for instance, its mass, inertia, and more) are correctly specified in the urdf file. In the following code, we include these parameters as part of the base_link:

<link> 
......  
<collision> 
      <geometry> 
      <cylinder length="0.03" radius="0.2"/> 
      </geometry> 
      <origin rpy="0 0 0" xyz="0 0 0"/> 
    </collision> 
 
    <inertial> 
  ...