🚀 Distro 2024.11.1 Released

[Nicogene]

2024.11.1 Distro Announcement

Brief description of the announcement

Hello @robotology/everyone 👋

The iCub project is happy to announce our Software Distro 2024.11.1 📦

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

🔘 icub-firmware-models: MBD for AMC-FOC

We extended our functional architecture responsible for generating the motor control's embedded code of the AMC-* family boards so that we now cover the case of the 2 PMSM motors controlled by the AMC-FOC board. Kudos to @mfussi66!
For details, see:

• Replace AMBLDC project with AMCBLDC experimental icub-firmware-models#94

🔘 ROS 2 support via yarp-devices-ros2 released and available in superbuild

The yarp-devices-ros2 repository that contains YARP Network Wrapper Server (NWS) and Network Wrapper Client (NWC) devices that read and write data on ROS 2 topic. The repo has seen its first release, and it is not included as part of the robotology distro packages.

To install yarp-devices-ros2 when you build the software from source, you can use the new robotology-superbuild option ROBOTOLOGY_USES_ROS2 that enable the compilation of the yarp-devices-ros2 repo. At the moment, no conda binary package is available for the yarp-devices-ros2 package, but it is planned to add one in the next months.

Refer to the yarp-devices-ros2 documentation documentation for details on how to use the devices contained in it.

🔘 New C++ library qpsolvers-eigen that abstracts away QP solvers

For a long time, the robotology distro included the osqp-eigen C++ library to solve Quadratic Programming optimization problems in C++. This release of the robotology distro includes the qpsolvers-eigen C++ library library that provides an API similar to osqp-eigen, but permitting to easily switch between two different solvers osqp or proxqp.

If you build from source you can install qpsolvers-eigen by enabling the ROBOTOLOGY_ENABLE_DYNAMICS CMake option of the robotology-superbuild, or if you use conda binaries you can just install the qpsolvers-eigen package from the conda-forge channel.

For examples of usage please check the qpsolvers-eigen documentation or if you want to migrate from osqp-eigen check the migration guide from osqp-eigen to qpsolvers-eigen.

🔘 creo2urdf: added vcpkg manifest

In:

• Add vcpkg manifest mode configuration icub-tech-iit/creo2urdf#116

we facilitated the installation from sources of creo2urdf adding the vcpkg manifest.
This json file allow to install the correct vcpkg dependencies while configuring with cmake.

🔘 Improved ergocub models meshes

In:

• Add the nice meshes for ergocub V1/V1_1/V1_2 icub-tech-iit/ergocub-software#266

we added a set of new meshes made by @Supermonkey-design for the ergoCub urdf models.
Here is how they look like:

SN000	SN001/2

🔘 icub-main: raw values interface

In :

• Add rawValuesPublisherInterface and related nws and nwc to stream and save raw values icub-main#983

we introduce a new interface though for facilitating low-level debugging operation. It basically allows users to stream to yarp ports whatever raw values they desire, with the prerogative of updating the firmware accordingly.
Moreover, it is connected to the TelemetryDeviceDumper plugin, so that, those raw values can be saved to a MATLAB .m file.

👴 Deprecations

🔘 ROS 1 compatibility deprecated

As the last supported ROS 1 distribution (ROS Noetic Ninjemys) is reaching its End of Life (EOL) on May 2025, this release is deprecating the existing form of ROS 1 support in the distribution, including:

• All the YARP Network Wrapper Server (NWS) and Network Wrapper Client (NWC) devices that use ROS 1, contained and listed in https://github.com/robotology/yarp-devices-ros,
• All the YARP carriers used to support ROS 1, including tcpros and xmlrpc carriers, contained in https://github.com/robotology/yarp-ros,
• All the YARP idl generators related to the support for generating YARP serializable classes out of ROS 1's .msg files,
• All the yarpserver capabilities for interacting with roscore, including the yarpserver --ros option.

All these functionalities is deprecated by the distro release 2024.11.0, and will be removed in the distro release 2025.02.0 .

The current migration path to ROS 2 is suggested:

• For ROS-compatible NWS and NWC devices, the ROS 2-power devices provided in yarp-devices-ros2 should be used instead of the deprecated ROS 1-enabled devices that used to be contained in yarp and are now contained in yarp-devices-ros. Compilation of the yarp-devices-ros2 repository can be enabled in the robotology-superbuild by enabling the ROBOTOLOGY_USES_ROS2 CMake option.
• For reading or writing data for ROS 2 topics, it is suggested to use the official ROS 2 C++ api to read and write topics, see https://docs.ros.org/en/humble/Tutorials/Beginner-CLI-Tools/Understanding-ROS2-Topics/Understanding-ROS2-Topics.html .
• For YARP serialible types, it is recommended to use thrift IDL definitions instead of rosmsg definitions, see https://yarp.it/latest/idls.html .

For any question or doubt related to ROS 1 deprecation, please post your question at https://github.com/orgs/robotology/discussions/categories/q-a .

🔘 iCub3 urdf models removed

In:

• Remove iCub3 models (iCubGazeboV3, iCubGenova09) icub-models-generator#281
• Removed iCub3 models icub-models#243

we removed the iCub3 urdf models since this robot became iRonCubMk3 and iRonCubMk3's urdf is maintained in another repository.

[Nicogene]

Hi @robotology/everyone,

we just released the Distro 2024.11.1 since I forgot to tag some repos under my maintenance, sorry for the inconvenience. I hope that this has not created any trouble in your workflow!

[traversaro]

Thanks to @antonellopaolino and @davidegorbani we noticed that there was an undocumented breaking change in BlockFactory 1.0.0 that was updated in 2024.11.1 . If you are seeing BlockFactory-related compilation errors on your downstream code, please check the migration guide in https://github.com/robotology/blockfactory/releases/tag/v1.0.0 .