Real vs simu params and gains (behavior difference)

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Hello arennuit.

Question 1: Would I be able to reuse the same geometric and dynamic parameters and gains in the simulation and get a stable simulation with a behaviour in simulation comparable to the real life behaviour?

In the Community Forum 2014 ROS-Industrial, people COMAU (manufacturer of robots) showed GAZEBO model of one of his robot. The model runs same algorithms and parameters that control real robot, so you can reproduce the behavior of the real robot in the gazebo.

From my experience developing controllers and simulation models for the automotive sector, if you have a good model, you can use the same PID in the real world as a starting point. This is the base of Hardware In the Loop (HIL) testing.

Question 2: If the behaviours are different are they totally different and unrelated, or are the gains / parameters from the real world a good start to tweak the gains / parameters of the simulated world?

If behaviours are different, this point the model is not correlated with the real plant. So the values of gains will not correlate. This could apply to UR5 because we do not have a model of the controlers of the robot and we use standar PID from ROS. For sure, the controller of the real UR5 is better than PID.

If you find information on the control algorithms for robot motors, I offer to colaborate with you to model them in GAZEBO.

Question 3: I know that gazebo uses ODE as its default engine, would the answer be the same with bullet or another engine? I don´t know.

I don't expect the gains to work for both the real hardware and its simulation because I doubt that the dynamics are the same. They might be qualitatively similar, but things like system friction and damping are hard to get right in simulation (if they are simulated at all). In my experience, gains can and will be considerably different.

Also, some hardware platforms implement controllers on the actuators, not the joints. Most Gazebo robot simulations I know of have no notion of actuators, so at least there's a scaling factor to apply between joint and actuator controllers. This is assuming simple reducers, if you have more complex transmissions then things get more hairy.

In the Community Forum 2014 ROS-Industrial, people COMAU (manufacturer of robots) showed GAZEBO model of one of his robot. The model runs same algorithms and parameters that control real robot, so you can reproduce the behavior of the real robot in the gazebo.

@jalfonso Which parameters are you referring to here?. I don't think the statement applies to the controller gains.