🚀 Distro 2022.08.0 Released

[Nicogene]

2022.08.0 Distro Announcement

Brief description of the announcement

Hello @robotology/everyone 👋

The iCub project is happy to announce our Software Distro 2022.08.0 📦

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.

The apt binaries cover the following platforms:

• Ubuntu 20.04 Focal 64-bits.
• Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy 64-bits.
• Debian 10 Buster 64-bits.

Detailed context

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

🆕 Updates

🔘 Implemented canBusFtSensor with ISixAxisForceTorqueSensors interface

@vvasco created the new device canBusFtSensor, which is a copy of canBusAnalogSensor with the implementation of the ISixAxisForceTorqueSensors interface.

Check out the following PR for further details:

• Added canBusFtSensor with ISixAxisForceTorqueSensors interface icub-main#813

🔘 Possibility to get more accurate estimates of the battery quantities

@triccyx has made available a bunch of new software machinery with the aim to retrieve more accurate estimates of the battery voltage and charge status straight from the Battery Management System board.

Find below a summary of the development:

• Can battery devel icub-firmware#285
• Can battery icub-firmware-shared#63
• ems v3.53, mc4plus v3.51, mc2plus v3.37: battery bms data streaming icub-firmware-build#57
• Can battery icub-main#793
• fix voltage truncation and add some doc icub-main#816

You can find the instructions on how to proceed with the configuration and the online reading by perusing https://github.com/robotology/icub-main/tree/devel/src/libraries/icubmod/embObjBattery.

🔘 Fix Euler angles representation for STRAIN2

Wrong behavior of the Euler angles was reported for the STRAIN2 device.
@Nicogene deployed the fix via the PR below:

• Fix euler angles representation for strain2 icub-firmware#286

🔘 Fix unintended change of frequency of iCub's controlBoard_nws_yarp instances

Recently, @GiulioRomualdi spotted an unintended downgrade of the frequency of the motor control from the traditional 100 Hz to 50 Hz. See the bug reported by @traversaro:

• Unintended change of frequency of iCub's controlBoard_nws_yarp instances from 100 Hz to 50 Hz robots-configuration#378

@Nicogene released a fix for all robots:

• Add explicit period parameter(0.01 s) for the controlboard_nws_yarp robots-configuration#379

🔘 Spawn waist xsensmt standalone and attach it to the NWS

Previously, robots with XSens MT IMU mounted in the waist were still spawning the IMU YARP Hardware Device via inertial instead of factoring out the related Network Wrapper Servers (NWS) from the hardware.

@traversaro opened an issue on this:

• Robot with XSens MT IMU in waist still spawn the IMU YARP Hardware Device via inertial instead of separating hardware and Network Wrapper Servers robots-configuration#355.

@Nicogene fixed it via:

• Spawn waist xsensmt standalone and attach it to NWS robots-configuration#373