🚀 Distro 2020.08 Released

[Nicogene]

Brief description of the announcement

Hello @robotology/everyone 👋

iCub-Tech is happy to announce our Software Distro 2020.08 📦

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

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

The binaries cover the following platforms:

• Ubuntu bionic 64-bits.
• Ubuntu focal 64-bits.
• Debian buster 64-bits.
• Windows 10 64-bits.

Detailed context

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

🆕 Updates

✨ Robot bazaar website 🌐

We made public our brand new web site, designed by the Team CODE(@vtikha, @valegagge, @mbrunettini, @aerydna, @AlexAntn, @ilaria-carlini, @lauracavaliere, @vvasco) of iCub-Tech.:sparkles:

It contains:

• A section with the list of robots of icub-tech family, with their respective infos(color, type, location etc.) 🤖
• A section for application deployment via dockerization 🚀
• A section where all these announcements are stored and enriched ⭐

In particular, for time-based releases(e.g. 2020.05, 2020.08) we added a section HIGHLIGHTS were you can find for this release the detailed explanation about the work on the manipulation in the gazebo environment.

We invite you to check it out and see it with your own eyes 👀

✨ icub-main CMake modernization 🔨

We deeply refactored the cmake structure of icub-main libraries (see robotology/icub-main#652 for details) introducing the COMPONENTS(iCubDev ctrlLib skinDynLib iKin iDyn learningMachine perceptiveModels actionPrimitives optimization) and making the CMakeConfig relocatable.

✨ iCub gazebo manipulation ready 🖐️

Thanks to the great work of @xEnVrE of the HSP@IIT group and @pattacini, with this latest distro we have an iCub Gazebo model usable for visuo-manipulation.
It is called iCubGazeboV2_5_visuomanip and we created a sandbox to experiment with iCub performing basic object grasping within the Gazebo simulator.

Moreover, you can try out to deploy it directly from brand new robot-bazaar, just click here and have fun! 😉

🔘 Click here for more details about the manipulation on gazebo

📖 Overview

With Distro 2020.08 we provide a new URDF model of the iCub robot specifically tailored for manipulation tasks as part of the icub-models repository. The new iCubGazeboV2_5_visuomanip model inherits from the standard iCubGazeboV2_5 and enables the use of the hands and the eyes with full support for gazing. Also, the eyes implement vision functionalities via RGB and depth cameras.

Below, you can find a visual comparison of iCubGazeboV2_5 vs. iCubGazeboV2_5_visuomanip.

⚙ Implementation details

The new model is NOT automatically generated yet; rather, it is obtained by adding manual modifications on top of iCubGazeboV_2_5. In the long term, our goal is certainly to complete these steps and produce the URDF entirely automatically.

The kinematic description of the hands and the meshes are derived from Simox, whereas the kinematics of the eyes stems from the official iCub libraries.

Here's a list of PR's that allowed us to achieve this important milestone:

• Add model iCubGazeboV2_5_visuomanip icub-models#42:
  • provide the iCubGazeboV2_5_visuomanip model from within the icub-models repository.
• iCub Manual Models used from build icub-models#43:
  • fix the build process of the icub-models repository for manually edited robots.
• Fix a couple of iCubGazeboV2_5_visuomanip discrepancies icub-models#45:
  • fix discrepancies in the iCubGazeboV_2_5_visuomanip model.
• [plugins][controlboard] Fix wrong feedback measurements for coupled joints gazebo-yarp-plugins#492:
  • fix control feedback signals for joints with couplings, e.g. eyes version/vergence and fingers, within the
    gazebo-yarp-plugins control board plugin.
• Implement limits for coupled joints gazebo-yarp-plugins#499:
  • allows handling limits for joints with couplings within the
    gazebo-yarp-plugins control board plugin.
• [plugins][maissensor] Fix discrepancy of MAIS analog sensor between simulation and real robot gazebo-yarp-plugins#502:
  • fix output of analogic encoders of fingers in order to match that of the real robot within the
    gazebo-yarp-plugins maissensor plugin.

🙏🏻 Acknowledgments

The development of the new model was made by xEnVrE of the HSP@IIT research line.

🤖 Applications

The new model has been already adopted in several projects. Here's below a couple of examples.

A sandbox for grasping with iCub

The repository icub-gazebo-grasping-sandbox is a self-contained dockerized sandbox that implements basic object grasping using the new iCub URDF within the Gazebo simulator.

Pouring experiments with iCub

The new model has also been used in an ongoing research project where iCub tracks a moving container while pouring into it.