Awesome

Robot descriptions in Python

Import open source robot descriptions as Python modules.

Importing a description for the first time automatically downloads and caches files for future imports. Most Awesome Robot Descriptions are available. All of them load successfully in respectively MuJoCo (MJCF) or Pinocchio, iDynTree, PyBullet and yourdfpy (URDF).

Installation

From conda-forge

conda install -c conda-forge robot_descriptions

From PyPI

pip install robot_descriptions

Usage

The library provides load_robot_description functions that return an instance of a robot description directly usable in the corresponding software. For example:

from robot_descriptions.loaders.pinocchio import load_robot_description

robot = load_robot_description("upkie_description")

Loaders are implemented for the following robotics software:

Loading will automatically download the robot description if needed, and cache it to a local directory.

Import as submodule

You can also import a robot description directly as a submodule of robot_descriptions:

from robot_descriptions import my_robot_description

The import will automatically download the robot description if you don't have it already, and cache it to a local directory. The submodule then provides the following paths:

Some robot descriptions include additional fields. For instance, the iiwa14_description exports URDF_PATH_POLYTOPE_COLLISION with more detailed collision meshes.

Examples

Loading a robot description:

• iDynTree
• MuJoCo
• Pinocchio
• PyBullet
• RoboMeshCat
• yourdfpy

Visualizing a robot description:

• MeshCat
• MuJoCo
• PyBullet
• RoboMeshCat
• yourdfpy

Command line tool

The command line tool can be used to visualize any of the robot descriptions below. For example:

robot_descriptions show solo_description

Descriptions

Available robot descriptions (gallery) are listed in the following categories:

• Arms
• Bipeds
• Dual arms
• Drones
• Educational
• End effectors
• Humanoids
• Mobile manipulators
• Quadrupeds

The DOF column denotes the number of actuated degrees of freedom.

Arms

Bipeds

Dual arms

Drones

Educational

End effectors

Humanoids

Mobile manipulators

Quadrupeds

Contributing

New robot descriptions are welcome! Check out the guidelines then open a PR.

Thanks

Thanks to the maintainers of all the git repositories that made these robot descriptions available.

Citation

If you use this project in your works, please cite as follows:

@software{robot_descriptions_py,
  title = {{robot_descriptions.py: Robot descriptions in Python}},
  author = {Caron, Stéphane and Romualdi, Giulio and Kozlov, Lev and Ordoñez Apraez, Daniel Felipe and Tadashi Kussaba, Hugo and Bang, Seung Hyeon and Zakka, Kevin and Schramm, Fabian},
  license = {Apache-2.0},
  url = {https://github.com/robot-descriptions/robot_descriptions.py},
  version = {1.13.0},
  year = {2024}
}

See also

• Awesome Robot Descriptions: curated list of robot descriptions in URDF, Xacro or MJCF formats.
• drake_models: collection of URDF and SDF descriptions curated for the Drake framework.
• MuJoCo Menagerie: collection of MJCF robot descriptions curated for the MuJoCo physics engine.
• robot_descriptions.cpp: package to use robot_descriptions.py in C++.