running simulation with slower update rate

[dcaffo98]

I'm working on a project in which I should control the franka manipulator in real time. Due to the poor computational power of my machine (virtual machine on a 6th gen Intel core i7, U series with 16 Gbs RAM) there's no way I can run gazebo at its default update rate of 1Khz. So, I've changed the panda.world file as follows

  <physics type="ode">                                      
      <real_time_update_rate>100.0</real_time_update_rate> 
       <max_step_size>0.01</max_step_size>                  
   </physics>                                                                                            

Given that real_time_update_rate * max_step_size = 1, the simulation still runs in real time but consuming way less resources.

But here comes my problems. Since the control of the franka manipulator still runs at 1Khz, should I downgrade it at 100Hz as well? I made an attempt changing the controlPeriod in panda.transmission.xacro to 0.01 but the behavior is the same.

Control a side, the biggest issue is that I think I've messed around with gravity (although the gravity is disabled by default in panda.world) and/or PID gain values. Indeed, as soon as the robot model spawns, it starts moving randomly, as shown in the little video I'm attaching to the discussion. The behaviour may be similar to the one reported here, even though the update rate of gazebo wasn't mentioned there.
Since I'm quite new to robotics, I have no idea on how to tune PID values to cope with the slower update rate (assuming that that is the real root of the problem), so any advice is welcome.

franka.mp4