Simulating a track driven robot
I'm trying simulate the movement of a robot with a rubber track similar to iRobot's LANdroid. Ideally I would like to represent the robot with URDF and use Gazebo as the simulation environment. I am particularly interested in tasks such as climbing over stairs; the way these robots climb over stairs is dependent on some approximation of a track being present.
Does anyone have any advice or pointers on how I can model a track driven robot, preferably with Gazebo & URDF?
Currently I am using ODE and some OpenGL visualizations I wrote myself. The tread is modeled as a series of overlapping non-colliding wheels. While this works, it is a very rough approximation and there are un-addressed issues such as determining the torque to apply on each wheel joint based upon the signal sent to the drive motor and the friction each wheel is encountering.
I have also considered modelling the track as a chain of rigid links being driven by the drive wheel. This would be a more accurate model of the tread but I'm concerned with the stability and performance of ODE if I take this approach.
