Cortado is the MIT CLEAR Lab's Franka manipulator cart.
Similar to the popular DROID setup, the cart uses a Franka Emika FR3 with a Robotiq 2F-85 gripper and a ZED Mini wrist camera. The cart is more robust, and relies on a manual column instead of a standing desk motor for height adjustment.
The cart components can be customized and purchased from Vention using this design. Feel free to use and modify the OnShape CAD designs of the custom attachment mounts are available.
The top-level instantiation lives at robots/cortado.urdf.xacro, which exposes the cortado macro defined in urdf/cortado.urdf.xacro and pulls in franka_description, robotiq_2f_85_gripper_visualization, and zed_description. Make sure those packages are on your ROS_PACKAGE_PATH (or AMENT_PREFIX_PATH for ROS 2) so $(find ...) can resolve them, then expand with xacro:
xacro robots/cortado.urdf.xacro > /tmp/cortado.urdfTop-level xacro args:
| Arg | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
robot_name |
cortado |
Name on the <robot> tag. |
prefix |
"" |
System-wide prefix prepended to every link and joint (cart, arm, gripper, camera). |
safety_distance |
0.03 |
Franka safety bubble (m). |
camera_mast |
2 |
Cart camera mast configuration: 0 (none), 1 (mast only), 2 (mast + extension). |
wrist_camera |
true |
Attach the wrist-mounted camera bracket and ZED Mini. |
flip_gripper |
true |
Rotate the Robotiq 180° about the tool axis. Recommended configuration to avoid camera and gripper coupling cable tie-ups. |
Pass a non-empty prefix (e.g. prefix:=left) when composing two carts in one scene — every link and joint name will be namespaced with left_.
scripts/view_cart.py is a self-contained uv script that fetches the dependency packages, expands the xacro, and serves the result in viser:
uv run scripts/view_cart.pyOpen http://localhost:8080 to inspect visual meshes, collision geometry, and per-link frames.
A MUCKa target with 40mm offset sockets is included right beneath the robot mount for kinematic calibration. You can 3D print a small tool, meant to be grasped by the Robotiq 2F-85 silicone fingers, to use the MUCKa calibration procedure.