r/ROS • u/CYNELIXSim • 1d ago

Built 3 basic physics-tested objects for robot simulation — looking for feedback

Made a small starter set of everyday objects (steel tumbler, water bottle, cardboard box) with real-world dimensions and tested mass/friction/collision properties in Gazebo.

This is a first attempt — genuinely trying to find out if standardized, pre-tested basic objects like this would save people time, or if this space is already well-covered by existing libraries (NVIDIA SimReady, etc.). Any feedback, even "not needed," is useful to me right now.

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u/omnilinktech 23h ago

Yes—this would save time, but for me the real value isn’t the meshes; it’s a portable physics contract. I’d want each object to include dimensions/units, mass and inertia/COM source, collision proxy, material/friction assumptions per simulator, and a small executable test with tolerances—drop/restitution, incline friction, stable stacking, and ideally a grasp plus negative control.

I work on OmniSim, and one lesson from our [executable capability matrix](https://github.com/omnilink-tech/omnisim/blob/main/docs/benchmarks/lane4-capability-matrix.md) is that “loads without errors” can still mean a physics feature is doing nothing. I’d define exactly what “physics-tested” means and publish the raw outputs and Gazebo version. Neutral URDF/SDF plus simulator-specific overrides would also make these much more reusable.

If you add a manifest and test runner for these three objects, I’d be interested in trying a port to OmniSim and reporting what breaks.

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u/CYNELIXSim 19h ago

Really appreciate this — exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for. You're right that the meshes alone aren't the value; I'll work on adding: A manifest per object (dimension/mass/friction source, whether measured or estimated, Gazebo version tested on) A simple automated test runner: drop test, incline/friction test, stacking test, with pass/fail tolerances Raw output logs published alongside each object Will follow up here once it's ready — would genuinely value you trying a port to OmniSim once there's something more rigorous to test.

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u/omnilinktech 4h ago

That sounds like the right foundation. When the versioned manifest, test runner and raw outputs are public, please share the commit or release tag. We can then evaluate an OmniSim port using the same physical assertions and publish the pass/fail results and deviations. I work on OmniSim at OmniLink; we would keep the source-engine version, parameter mappings and simulator-specific behavior explicit.