🚀 Distro 2025.02.0 Released

[Nicogene]

2025.02.0 Distro Announcement

Brief description of the announcement

Hello @robotology/everyone 👋

The iCub project is happy to announce our Software Distro 2025.02.0 📦

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

🔘 gz-sim-yarp-plugins controlboard handles joint coupling

In:

• ControlBoardDriver: add iJointCoupling interface gz-sim-yarp-plugins#221

The iJointCoupling software layer has been added to the controlboard plugin for handling the joint coupling.

🔘 iCub coupling devices added in icub-main

In:

• Add couplingICubHandMk2 device coupling handler icub-main#995
• Add couplingICubEye device icub-main#997

the devices couplingICubHandMk2 and couplingICubEye have been added to icub-main. They handle respectively the coupling of the iCub hands and eyes.

🔘 icub-models supports now gz-sim

It has been added in icub-models the support for gz-sim, here is the list of involved PRs:

• gz-sim-yarp-plugins: add support for icub 2.x icub-models-generator#280
• iCubGazeboV2_5_visuomanip: add support for gz-sim icub-models#249

In particular, the iCubGazeboV2_5_visuomanip uses the coupling devices couplingICubHandMk2 and couplingICubEye recently added in icub-main.

🔘 Added ergoCubGazeboV1_3 and removed ergoCubGazeboV1_2

Since ergoCubSN002 received an upgrade regarding the battery pack, we changed the urdf accordingly bumping the version from V1_2 to V1_3.
Here is the relative work:

• Update SN002 URDF to consider new battery pack icub-tech-iit/ergocub-software#259
• Automatic update of urdf triggered by GitHub Action icub-tech-iit/ergocub-software#285

🔘 r1-models repository created

We created the r1-models repository, a sort of "twin" of ergocub-software, it contains the URDF of R1Mk3 robot and the creo2urdf configuration files. It contains the model of:

• R1Mk3Gazebo
• R1Mk3Gazebo_minContacts
• R1SN003

🔘 gz-sim-yarp-plugins improvements

There were several improvements to gz-sim-yarp-plugins, including:

• Fix reset of models using gz-sim-yarp-plugins
• Permit to set arbitrary initial positions in included gz-sim-yarp-plugins models
• Permit to set enable_tags and disable_tags in gzyarp::RobotInterface robotinterface

These improvements should drastically simplify the migration from gazebo-yarp-plugins to gz-sim-yarp-plugins, if you still have problems in the migration please open an issue in https://github.com/robotology/gz-sim-yarp-plugins/issues/new.

🔘 It is not compulsory anymore to globally set name and mail in git settings before using the robotology-superbuild

Before this distro, to use the robotology-superbuild it was necessary to manually set the global name and mail in git with commands:

• git config --global user.name <name>
• git config --global user.email <email>

while this indeed makes sense in developer machines where you may need to commit some change to git repos at some point, it was just annoying on non-developer machines, such as Docker containers or CI machines and script. Since robotology/ycm-cmake-modules#472 it is now possible to build the robotology-superbuild without the need to set globally the user.name and user.email global git parameters.

🔘 LuGre Friction Model

Warning

This is still under development!

We recently added in the firmware of our boards the LuGre friction model, we are using for estimating the torque without the usage of FT sensors.

Here are some relevant PRs:

• Added LuGre friction model parameters to protocol icub-main#989
• Sensorless torque estimation added to motor control icub-firmware#527
• LuGre friction model parameters added to ETH protocol icub-firmware-shared#99

In this README you can find more details.

👴 Deprecations

🔘 Gazebo Classic and gazebo-yarp-plugins reached End-of-Life and are officially deprecated

On January 2025, Gazebo Classic 11 reached its End-of-Life (EOL). For this reason also the companion repo gazebo-yarp-plugins is deprecated, all users of the robots-superbuild are warly suggested to migrate to the new gz-sim and gz-sim-yarp-plugins, as Gazebo Classic 11 support may be removed in a future version of the robotology distro.

Documentation for the migration is available:

• How to use gz-sim-yarp-plugins with ergoCub models (this tutorial also applies to iCub)
• How to migrate from gazebo-yarp-plugins to gz-sim-yarp-plugins

Unfortunately, some features were available in Gazebo Classic that are still a work in progress in gz-sim, including:

• Simulated Depth Camera support in YARP plugins
• Support for running gz sim command in macOS and Windows is currently not available. Users on macOS or Windows should run separately the commands gz sim -s (to run the simulation server) and gz sim -g (to run the GUI, if necessary).

The idea is to work on these features in the future, if you have any other feature that is blocking your migration from Gazebo Classic to Modern Gazebo (gz-sim), please open an issue at https://github.com/robotology/gz-sim-yarp-plugins/issues/new, thanks!

🔘 ycm-cmake-modules and CMake < 3.23 deprecations

• YCM deprecated the FindSQlite module and NON_INTERACTIVE_BUILD, YCM_USE_CMAKE_NEXT and variables. For more info, check ycm-cmake-modules 0.18.2 releases notes. If you still need to use these modules or variables, feel free to explain your use case by opening an issue at https://github.com/robotology/ycm-cmake-modules/issues/new
• Future version of the robotology distro may drop support for using a CMake ersion earlier than 3.23, if you are using apt to install CMake and you are on Ubuntu 22.04, in the future you may need to install the Kitware apt repo.