Gravity Compensation

Gravity compensation holds both arms weightless so you can move them freely by hand. Each free joint is commanded with zero stiffness, velocity damping, and a feedforward torque that cancels the arm’s modelled gravity — so the arm neither sags nor springs back. It’s the easiest way to pose the robot, check its range of motion, or hand-guide it. You can run it from the web control panel or the CLI (axol gravity-comp).

Before you start

Axol installed (one-command install) and the robot powered on.
CAN up and motors verified. The control panel handles this on connect; on the CLI run axol can.setup once, then check a motor with axol motor.info.

The arms go compliant the moment this starts — be ready to support them so they don’t drop.

Run it

Control Panel
CLI

Connect the robot

Connect the Axol Host — the panel connects the robot automatically (press Connect on the Axol tile if needed). Gravity comp needs only the robot connection — no cameras. See the Web Control Panel guide.

Select Gravity Compensation and Start

Pick Gravity Compensation from the operation selector and press Start. The arms go weightless immediately. Press Stop to hold them rigid again.

On the robot machine:

axol gravity-comp                                 # all 7 joints free, both arms
axol gravity-comp --right_channel null            # left arm only
axol gravity-comp --kd 1.0                        # heavier damping (less floppy)
axol gravity-comp --free_joints [WRIST_3]         # only WRIST_3 free; the rest held rigid

Press Ctrl+C to stop. Use --free_joints to float only the named joints while the rest of the arm holds its pose — handy for isolating one joint at a time. See the gravity-comp reference for every flag.

If an arm sags or pushes back, the gravity model needs tuning — adjust the per-joint mass and com fields on AxolConfig. See Gravity compensation.

Next steps

Teleoperation

Drive the arms from a VR headset instead of by hand.

gravity-comp reference

Every flag — free joints, damping, per-arm channels.

Teleoperation Data Collection

Get Started

Operations

Remote Teleop

Web Interfaces

Advanced

Gravity Compensation

Before you start

Run it

Next steps

Teleoperation

gravity-comp reference

​Before you start

​Run it

​Next steps

Teleoperation

gravity-comp reference

Before you start

Run it

Next steps