How to properly choose damping and friction parameters for humanoids and arm robots in Isaac Lab?

[louislelay]

Hey everyone,

I feel answers to this question are going to interest a few ones here.

I sometimes have trouble understanding how damping and friction parameters are choose for the asset configuration file. It's not always something present in the original .urdf file. Specifically for humanoids/arms robots.

I don't find a lot of explanation in the Isaac Lab documentation so is it something we're supposed to find by trial and error, or do more accurate methods exist ? And if so do you have resources about it?

Thanks in advance! 😁

[KaydenKnapik]

Yes would love to find out how to determine the stiffness and damping values! Wan't to do sim2real so this is rather important I believe

[louislelay]

Hi @RandomOakForest,

Would you mind asking the rest of the team how they went about determining the damping and friction values for the H1 asset configuration file, for example? If they have any tips for the implicit actuator, I’d be really grateful.

Also, I had a quick question about something mentioned in the how-to guide:

“We changed all the joint’s damping and friction parameters to 0.0. This ensures that we can perform effort-control on the joints without PhysX adding additional damping.”

But when I look at the assets used in Isaac Lab, most of them already include non-zero damping and friction values, which seems a bit contradictory. I’d really appreciate any clarification or guidance on this.

Thanks a lot!