Robot dynamics model alternatives (MuJoCo, pinocchio, Drake, etc.)

[Tadinu]

Hi,

Thanks for this long-awaited repo, which greatly helps with the sim2real testing on Franka!

Aside from Genesis as the simulation backend for robot dynamics model, how would you think of alternatives like MuJoCo, pinocchio, Drake as well?, which all have rich python API.

pinocchio is actually the base for robot models in libfranka itself.
https://github.com/frankarobotics/libfranka/blob/main/src/robot_model.h

Drake + franka driver
https://github.com/RobotLocomotion/drake-franka-driver
https://github.com/DexaiRobotics/drake-franka-driver

Also quite relevant, if already present, would you mind sharing a benchmark as compared to libfranka C++? This may help provide some useful info as moving from sim to hw I guess.

Thank you very much!

[BarisYazici]

I am thinking about providing alternatives. Which simulation engine would you think is the most needed? I don't have the benchmark but probably C++ is more powerful with the python GIL it could add some latency.

[Tadinu]

Given already existing relevant ones for pinocchio + drake above, I would vote for MuJoCo, mostly out of usage convenience + high-fidelity physics, which seems to be also done here as for ref:
https://github.com/tenfoldpaper/multipanda_ros2/tree/humble/franka_hardware