URDF VS USD
URDF is compact and robot-centric. OpenUSD is a general, scalable scene-description and composition platform with schemas spanning geometry, animation, lighting and physics.
DECISION MATRIX
Robot model structure.
Composable scene description across many assets and domains.
Simple XML model organization; composition is mostly handled outside the core format.
References, layers, variants and authored opinions are central concepts.
A single robot model is the natural unit.
Large assemblies and complex scenes are natural units.
Selected physical robot properties.
UsdPhysics provides rigid bodies, colliders, joints and simulation-scene schemas.
Deeply integrated into ROS workflows.
Increasingly important in simulation, digital twins and asset pipelines.
Can provide structural source evidence.
Conversion may add scene organization but does not automatically create semantics missing from URDF.
CHOOSE URDF
CHOOSE USD
USE BOTH
Use URDF as a source robot model and derive USD assets for simulation or scene pipelines.
Track provenance so generated USD remains traceable to the structural source.
Do not mistake URDF→USD conversion for semantic enrichment; capability and operational context still need their own representation.
PRIMARY SOURCES