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@PierrickKoch PierrickKoch released this 12 Feb 09:28
· 182 commits to master since this release
1.4
38fa4af

What's new in MORSE 1.4?

General

  • Numpy is now needed for Morse. It is used in several places where
    computations using mathutils is not precise enough (float vs double
    precision).
  • Time management has been improved in various way. A morse_sync tool has
    been introduced to improve precision and timing of high-frequency components
    (#683). If available in Blender (Blender > 2.77), it is also possible to
    accelerate or slow-down the simulation (#388). Moreover, Morse now try to
    compute automatically the right time settings. If you meet any problem
    related to time, make sure to read the Time and Event documentation and / or
    report issue to the Morse project.

Components

Robots

  • the human avatar in MORSE has been entierly rewritten. The new human model is
    much simpler, yet much nicer (in particular, it features mesh skinning for
    good looking animations). On the downside, the interactive mode is gone for
    now. Depending on interest, it can be revived in a future version (possibly
    through external scripts, for added flexibility).

Actuators

  • the semantic of the Waypoint and Destination actuators has slightly changed:
    once the destination is reached, they do not attempt anymore to actively stay
    at this position. This permits another motion actuator to 'take over' the
    control of the robot. The previous behaviour is still desirable in certain
    cases (notably for flying robots), and can be re-enabled by setting the
    property RemainAtDestination to true:
    motion.properties(RemainAtDestination=True). This option is also added to
    the RotorcraftWaypoint actuator, but it defaults to true (hence, no
    behaviour change compared to MORSE 1.3).
  • the orientation actuator has been enhanced to possibly work more
    realistically, by limiting the speed of the rotations. The default is still
    to go directly to the desired orientation.
  • The keyboard and joystick actuators do not call anymore the robot
    apply_speed method with values set to zero when no input is received. The
    previous behaviour prevented them to be used in combination with another
    motion actuator (they would always overwrite other motion commands with
    zeros).
  • The Armature actuator has two new services (rotate_joints and
    translate_joints) that let the user set the rotations/translations of only
    a subset of the armature's joints by providing a custom mapping {joint name:
    value}.
  • The rotorcraft_attitude actuator has been extended to be able to control the
    rotorcraft in yaw rate or in absolute yaw (using the YawRateControl
    property). If it is the case, you can configure if you want to configure to
    use normal yaw or north using the property UseAngleAgainstNorth.
    Last, you can configure the actuator to use a linear or quadratic thrust
    model using LinearThrust.
  • Introduce the drag "actuator" which allows to simulate the drag (air
    resistance) force opposite to the move of the robot. It allows more
    realistic simulation (if desired).
  • Introduce the external_force actuator which allows to apply external force
    (typically force from the environment such as wind) to a robot. It has the
    same interface than force_torque, but apply force in the global frame.
  • Introduce the quadrotor_dynamic_control actuator which allows to control a
    quadrotor from the speed of its four engine, using simple dynamic equation.

Sensors

  • longitude, latitude and altitude are not anymore properties of
    the GPS sensor but must be set at the environment level. Moreover, the
    property angle_against_north allows to configure the angle between the
    X-axis and the geographic north (must be positive when the Blender X-axis is
    East of true North, negative if is West of true North).
  • Introduce the new high-level sensor Attitude, allowing to compute the
    attitude of the system
  • Introduce the sensor Magnetometer which allows to compute the magnetic field
    vector of the Earth.
  • Extend the sensor IMU to return also the magnetic field vector.
  • Fixed the collision sensor: it now detects collision only when it is actually
    colliding (before, any object in a 1x1x1m box around the sensor would return
    a collision). While here, improve the documentation with a complete example.
  • Introduce the airspeed sensor , which allows to compute the speed of a
    vehicle relative to the air.

Modifiers

  • Introduce ECEF, Geodetic, Geocentric modifiers, allowing to convert
    coordinates from Blender world to ECEF-r or Geodetic or Geocentric
    coordinates (and vice-versa). It should improve interoperability with flight
    systems in general.
  • Introduce Feet modifier, to convert imperial units to meter buts (and
    vice-versa)

Middlewares

General

  • Introduce a binding for the Mavlink protocol easing the interoperability of
    Morse with a lot of free autopilots / architectures.

ROS

  • Some ROS 'housekeeping' has been performed in this release, including
    removing the need for rospkg (easier installation!), removing ROS interface
    with the non-standard (and unused?) JointPositions message and removing
    references roslib.load_manifest(), a memory of rosbuild-era.

HLA

  • Handle automatically the case where attributed published by Morse are not
    owned by it.
  • Allow to specify a stop_time for the simulation (in simulated seconds)
  • Make lookahead configurable for the Morse federate

YARP

  • Add an adapter for Depth Cameras.

Builder API

API addition

  • It is now possible to import environment composed of multiples scenes. The
    user should select which is the "main_scene" when importing the environment.
    Moreover, a method "Environment.set_background_scene" has been added to configure the
    scene to use in background (#651).
  • The method "bpymorse.set_speed", used to changed the frequency of Morse
    main loop is now deprecated in favor of "Environment.simulator_frequency".
  • The method Environmement.set_time_scale allows to accelerate or
    slow-down the simulation (#388).
  • The new method "Environment.use_vsync" allows to control the vsync parameter

Pymorse

  • Robots created in loop are handled smartly. They are still usable as
    previously, but it is also possible to access them using the list foos (if
    your robot name is foo) (#358).
  • Streams are now created lazily, fixing control with large number of robots /
    sensors (#626).
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