Meshes are _not_ supported for proximity: in DRAKE

Question

I have this error "[console] [warning] Meshes are not supported for proximity:" when I try to import a URDF robot model into drake . I cant figure the reason behind this error or why drake is unable to load the full URDF model.

Answer 1

Unfortunately Drake currently doesn't support general meshes for proximity query, i.e., it doesn't compute the distance between two general meshes.

If your mesh is convex, then you can modify your URDF file to add a <drake:declare_convex/> tag. For example

      <collision name="my_mesh">
        <geometry>
          <mesh xmlns:drake="drake.mit.edu">
            <drake:declare_convex/>
            <uri>PATH_TO_MY_MESH_FILE</uri>
            <scale>1. 1. 1.</scale>
          </mesh>
        </geometry>
        <surface>
          <friction>
            <ode>
              <mu>2</mu>
              <mu2>2</mu2>
            </ode>
          </friction>
        </surface>
      </collision>

Then drake (and the underlying distance computation function) will know that the meshes are convex, and call the right algorithm to compute the distance.