How to add a "robotPlatform" with cylindrical body mesh to a "robotScenario" object in MATLAB R2025a?

I want to add a "robotPlatform" whose body mesh is cylindrical to my "robotScenario" object in MATLAB R2025a. However, the "robotPlatform" function doesn't allow specifying the body mesh type via a name-value argument, and the generated platform uses a "cuboid" body mesh.

How can I set or change the body mesh type to a "cylinder"?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

By default, the robotPlatform object uses a cuboid body mesh. You can update the body mesh using the updateMesh function. However, this function does not provide a built-in option for a cylindrical mesh. The available options are: "Cuboid", "GroundVehicle", "RigidBodyTree", or "Custom". 

To generate a platform with cylindrical mesh, set the "type" input argument to "Custom" in the "updateMesh" function and specify appropriate values for "Faces" and "Vertices" name-value arguments. You can use the extendedObjectMesh function to generate the "Faces" and "Vertices" values corresponding to a cylinder.

For guidance, refer to the example below:

% Create a Robot Scenario
scenario = robotScenario(UpdateRate=1,StopTime=10);

% Add the ground plane as static mesh
addMesh(scenario,"Plane",Size=[3 3],Color=[0.7 0.7 0.7]);

% Create a cylinder mesh with n equally spaced vertices around its circumference
n = 100;
mesh = extendedObjectMesh('cylinder', n); 
mesh = scale(mesh,[0.2,0.2,0.2]); % scale mesh in each dimension

% Create a robot platform with a cylinder mesh
platform2 = robotPlatform("Cylinder",scenario,BaseTrajectory=traj);
updateMesh(platform2,"Custom",Position=[1 1 0.5],Faces=mesh.Faces,Vertices=mesh.Vertices)

% Visualize the scenario
[ax,plotFrames] = show3D(scenario);
axis equal

Note that if you only need a static cylindrical object (not a moving platform), you can add it directly to the robotScenario object using the addMesh function.