Trade-off between ERP/CFM parameter preservation and DART stiffness parameter re-tuning for stiff Gazebo manipulation models

This examination assesses the feasibility of migrating ODE-tuned stiff-contact models to DART in Gazebo Harmonic while preserving contact force magnitudes and controller compatibility. Gazebo's <physics> SDF element switches between ODE and DART engines, but the two encode contact stiffness differently. ODE uses ERP and CFM to soften constraints, while DART exposes independent stiffness and damping per material pair. This incompatibility means direct migration without redefining every contact surface, as no automated conversion path exists in the core engine or ROS 2 plugins.

Migrating a stiff peg-in-hole model from ODE to DART in Gazebo Harmonic exposes a sensor force mismatch: the <contact> sensor scales output by ERP under ODE but reports raw computed forces under DART, breaking calibrated controllers. Additionally, DART's real-time factor degrades above 50 simultaneous contacts, whereas ODE sustains higher step rates at the expense of force accuracy. No built-in tool converts ERP/CFM to DART stiffness/damping, forcing empirical re-tuning per engine.

What documented mappings exist between ODE ERP/CFM and DART stiffness/damping for stiff contacts? Does libgazebo_ros_force provide engine-agnostic normalization, or must users apply post-hoc scaling? Are published benchmarks available that report both force error and real-time factor for peg-in-hole tasks under both engines?