1.4

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).

1.3

Morse 1.3

=========

Major changes since 1.2:

General
-------
- MORSE now installs by default support for almost all its supported
  middlewares (ROS, YARP, MOOS, HLA, and (partially) pocolibs). This should
  improve end-users' first experience with MORSE (it 'just works')
- new sandbox environment. Check `the doc for a screenshot <https://www.openrobots.org/morse/doc/latest/quickstart.html>`_.

Components
----------

Robots
++++++

Actuators
+++++++++

- Introduce the new actuator "arucomarker", allowing to
  simulate the ArUco augmented-reality marker.

Sensors
+++++++

- The timestamp field is now in seconds instead of milliseconds (#498)

- Semantic camera gains two properties (#396):
    - `tag` allows to restrict the kind of object you want to detect
    - `relative` returns the position information of the various objects from
      the camera sensor frame (and not the global frame).

- Laser Scanner sensors gain the possibility to return also a
  remission value at the `rssi` level.

- Introduce the new sensor "Radar Altimeter", allowing to retrieve the
  distance to the ground.

- Improvement of Acceleromter, IMU and Velocity sensor.  They now works
  properly with robots with or without physics, and returns properly
  information in the sensor frame.  The computation method is configurable
  using the `ComputationMode` property, counterpart of the `ControlType` in
  several actuators.

- Introduce the new sensor "Barometer" allowing to compute the atmospheric pressure.

Middlewares
-----------

General
+++++++

- Each datastream manager now get an action handler, allowing them to run some
  specific middleware behaviour once by simulation turn.

Socket
++++++

- Socket middleware now accepts the keyword 'port' to specify on which port
  you want the socket binds itself.
- It is now possible to synchronise with an external clock using the socket
  middleware. See the documentation of **time_sync**.

Moos
++++

- Support for Moos has been enhanced, allowing to use multiples Moos nodes.
  Moreover, it supports additional actuators such as teleport or light
  actuator.

HLA
+++

- HLA can be now used as a general purpose middleware, i.e. it is possible to
  import / export any actuator / sensor using the HLA interface. Through, for
  moment, no Simulation Object Model (SOM) has been formally defined for
  Morse.

Builder API
-----------

API addition
++++++++++++

- Add a method Environment.configure_stream_manager allowing to pass
  option/information to each datastream manager.
It is now possible to control the mist settings in Morse, using
  Environment.enable_mist`` and ``Environment.set_mist_settings.

1.3-beta1

[testing] Add a test for synchronisation through socket

1.2.2

Morse maintenance release 1.2.2

-------------------------------

This is a bug fixe release for Morse 1.2. It includes fix for the following
issues:

- mark Morse ready for blender 2.72 and 2.73
- fix infrared sensor builder script
- make odometry_noise work properly at different level
- fix ros/depth_camera encoding
- use the right parent in the robot template