URDF Studio

Next-Generation Visual Robot Design Platform

Live demo: urdf.d-robotics.cc

English | 中文

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📖 Project Overview

URDF Studio is a powerful, web-based visual environment designed for creating, editing, and exporting Unified Robot Description Format (URDF) models. It abstracts complex XML authoring into an intuitive graphical interface, allowing roboticists to focus on kinematic design, geometric detailing, and hardware specification.

The platform integrates Generative AI for rapid prototyping and automated model auditing, ensuring your designs are physically plausible and simulation-ready for environments like MuJoCo.

✨ Key Features

🦴 Advanced Design Modalities

• Skeleton Mode: Build kinematic chains (Links & Joints) and define topological relationships.
• Detail Mode: Fine-tune visual and collision geometries using primitives or high-resolution mesh imports (STL/OBJ/DAE).
• Hardware Mode: Specify electromechanical parameters, motor selection, and transmission ratios.
• Multi-Robot Assembly: Merge multiple URDFs into a single model (e.g., attaching a robotic hand to an arm) with automatic joint re-parenting.
• Precision Collision Editor: Edit collision bodies independently from visual geometry for accurate physics simulation.

🎨 Immersive 3D Workspace

• High-Fidelity Rendering: PBR materials and photorealistic rendering via Three.js.
• Intuitive Controls: Industry-standard transformation gizmos for precise manipulation.
• Visual Analytics: Real-time visualization of joint axes, center of mass (CoM), and inertia tensors.
• Optimized Performance: Features specialized partial reloading for collision body updates, ensuring instant feedback during fine-tuning.

🤖 AI-Augmented Engineering

• Generative AI: Create robot structures using natural language prompts.
• AI Inspector: Automated 6-category quality assessment (Physical Plausibility, Kinematics, Naming, etc.) with detailed scoring and PDF reports.

📥 Interoperability & Export

• Import: Load existing projects via ZIP (URDF + meshes).
• Export: Production-ready packages including URDF, consolidated meshes, BOM (CSV), and MuJoCo XML.

📚 Documentation

Key project references:

1. Architecture Boundaries: Layering, dependency direction, and module ownership.
2. Robot Canvas Library: Notes for the reusable react-robot-canvas workspace.
3. Contributor Prompt Context: The single prompt source of truth for contributors and coding agents.

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🚀 Installation Guide

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18 or higher)
• npm or yarn

Setup

1. Clone the Repository

   git clone https://github.com/OpenLegged/URDF-Studio.git
   cd URDF-Studio

2. Install Dependencies

   npm install

3. Configure Environment (Optional for AI) Create a .env.local file:

   VITE_OPENAI_API_KEY=your_api_key
   VITE_OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://api.openai.com/v1
   VITE_OPENAI_MODEL=deepseek-v3

4. Start Development Server

   npm run dev

   Visit http://localhost:5173 in your browser.

USD Runtime Note

USD loading uses the bundled USD WASM runtime, which requires a cross-origin isolated page because it depends on SharedArrayBuffer.

• Use npm run dev for local development, and open the app from http://localhost:<port> or http://127.0.0.1:<port>.
• Use npm run preview when validating the production build locally.
• If you open the app from a LAN IP address, a remote HTTP URL, or another non-secure origin, the browser will ignore COOP/COEP, SharedArrayBuffer will stay unavailable, and USD imports will still fail. Use HTTPS for those setups.
• Do not serve dist/ with a plain static server such as python -m http.server, VS Code Live Server, or any other server that does not send:

Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy: same-origin
Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy: require-corp

If those headers are missing, USD imports will fail even though the rest of the app still loads.

📝 Usage Instructions

1. Kinematic Setup: Use the Skeleton Mode to add links and joints. Use the tree view to manage the robot hierarchy.
2. Geometry & Physics: Switch to Detail Mode to assign STL/OBJ meshes or primitive shapes to your links. You can adjust mass and inertia properties in the Property Editor.
3. Actuator Selection: In Hardware Mode, select joints to assign motors from the built-in library (Unitree, RobStride, etc.).
4. Verification: Use the AI Inspector to run a comprehensive check on your model. Review the scores and suggestions before exporting.
5. Exporting: Use the Export button to download a complete ZIP package compatible with ROS and MuJoCo.

🤝 Contribution Guidelines

We welcome contributions! To contribute:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature).
3. Commit Your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature').
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature).
5. Open a Pull Request.

Please ensure your code adheres to the project's TypeScript and React conventions.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See the LICENSE file for details.

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Acknowledgments

Supported by D-Robotics.