🚀 Distro 2024.02.0 Released

[Nicogene]

2024.02.0 Distro Announcement

Brief description of the announcement

Hello @robotology/everyone 👋

The iCub project is happy to announce our Software Distro 2024.02.0 📦

This is a major release that comprises binary packages as well. Therefore, follow the instructions available in our documentation to upgrade your system and/or download the new dependencies.

You can find the tags composing this distro in our Software Versioning Table.

Detailed context

This distro is shipped with several updates and fixes, including the ones listed hereafter:

🆕 Updates

🔘 New joint coupling's sw architecture

We recently re-design how in our software we want to handle the coupling of joints in underactuated systems.
In particular, this new architecture is based on the YARP plugin system, this allows to load runtime the coupling handler, without introducing compile-time dependencies.
First of all we designed a new interface yarp::dev::IJointCoupling in order to fit the architecture explained as follow.

• IJointCoupling: an interface for handling coupled joints yarp#3026 (comment)

Then we started using this new infrastructure in simulation, in particular the coupling handler of hand mk5 has been already refactored in order to be a plugin:

• HandMk5 refactor as device icub-tech-iit/ergocub-software#178
• ControlBoardDriver: support use of IJointCoupling devices in gazebo_yarp_controlboard and drop support for hardcoded HandMK5 coupling gazebo-yarp-plugins#671

🔘 xcub-moveit2 is out now

xcub-moveit2 is a collector of ros2 packages to control in cartesian space both iCub and ergoCub robots by means of ros2_control and MoveIt tools.

Check out the project on the MoveIt website.

🔘 2FOC firmware improvements

Fix a synchronization problem in the quadrature encoder counter reset by index. Now the motors can run smoothly:

• Reset quadrature encoder counter via HW icub-firmware#455
• 2foc.hex V3.3.24 icub-firmware-build#128

🔘 Motor temperature reading

If a motor is equipped with temperature sensor, now it is possibile to get the motor temperature by the API of IMotor interface. See icub-tech documentation.

🔘 IMU test

We added to icub-tests a new test for the IMU sensors. The aim is to check the Euler angles values measured by the sensor and compare them to the expected values computed with the forward kinematics parsing the URDF of the robot:

• New test for IMU orientation  icub-tests#65

The data from the encoders and the sensors are acquired and processed realtime, and the parameters to run the test could be set in a specific configuration file:

• Imu test - define and configure parameters of the test in the .ini file  icub-tests#67

🔘 icub-firmware-* fully integrated in robotology-superbuild

Now the robotology-superbuild integrates also the icub-firmware-build repository.
In a nutshell, this means that since 2024.02.0 release, now if you enable the ROBOTOLOGY_ENABLE_ICUB_HEAD
option in the superbuild, on the clean build of the superbuild you can find the exact version of the firmware that you need to flash on the robot in the <superbuild_build_directory>/install/share/icub-firmware/ folder.

Furthermore, now the icub-firmware binaries are also available in the icub-firmware conda package available in the robotology channel. For example, if you want to create a conda environment called xcubfirmware to install the icub-firmware corresponding to the distro 2024.02.0, you can with the following command:

mamba create -n xcubfirmware -c conda-forge -c robotology icub-firmware "robotology-distro==2024.02.0"

After installation, you will find the icub-firmware files in $CONDA_PREFIX\share\icub-firmware in Linux/macOS and %CONDA_PREFIX%\Library\share\icub-firmware on Windows.

For more details, see the corresponding PRs:

• Add CMakeLists.txt to install firmware and scripts  icub-firmware-build#124
• Add icub-firmware-build to icub-head profile robotology-superbuild#1559
• YCMEPHelper: add SHALLOW option to wrap EP's GIT_SHALLOW option ycm-cmake-modules#440
• Ensure that icub-firmware and icub-firmware-models get updated by the update-latest-releases GitHub Action robotology-superbuild#1560

🔘 Several important fixes to the wrist-mk2 of ergoCub

• Improved direct kinematics in wrist mk2.1 model icub-firmware-models#82
• Wrist stuck at startup bug fixed icub-firmware#467
• AMC V1.13 with improved wrist Mk2 direct kinematics solver icub-firmware#469

🔘 Community contributions

• Changes in skinManager configuration files icub-main#932 from @rustlluk 🎉

👴 Deprecations

🔘 Replace embObjInertial w/ embObjIMU

embObjInertial was the "legacy" device that handled the inertial sensors on iCub. It was used for old boards (e.g. mtb board) and it was based on an old firmware service that is not used anymore.

We managed to add the support to those old boards in the "modern" embObjIMU device and this allowed also to remove both the old device and the old firmware inertial service that is not used anymore, reducing the code duplication and the size of the firmware binaries.

• Replace embObjInertial w/ embObjIMU – Stint 1 robots-configuration#420
• Replace embObjInertial w/ embObjIMU – Stint 2 robots-configuration#595

[traversaro]

Hello everyone, sorry I forgot to update the release notes in time, but I would like to provide more details on the "icub-firmware-* fully integrated in robotology-superbuild" functionality.

In a nutshell, this means that since 2024.02.0 release, now if you enable the ROBOTOLOGY_ENABLE_ICUB_HEAD
option in the superbuild, on the clean build of the superbuild you can find the exact version of the firmware that you need to flash on the robot in the <superbuild_build_directory>/install/share/icub-firmware/ folder.

Furthermore, now the icub-firmware binaries are also available in the icub-firmware conda package available in the robotology channel. For example, if you want to create a conda environment called xcubfirmware to install the icub-firmware corresponding to the distro 2024.02.0, you can with the following command:

mamba create -n xcubfirmware -c conda-forge -c robotology icub-firmware "robotology-distro==2024.02.0"

After installation, you will find the icub-firmware files in $CONDA_PREFIX\share\icub-firmware in Linux/macOS or %CONDA_PREFIX%\Library\share\icub-firmware on Windows.

fyi @robotology/iit-artificial-mechanical-intelligence @robotology/icub-tech-support-team