🚀 Distro 2025.05.0 Released

[Nicogene]

2025.05.0 Distro Announcement

Brief description of the announcement

Hello @robotology/everyone 👋

The iCub project is happy to announce our Software Distro 2025.05.0 📦

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

🔘 ergoCub models tweaks and fixes

The ergoCub URDF models got some important changes:

• The sw and hw limits have been fixed in order to be coherent with the real robots (https://github.com/ergocub-software/pulls/298).
• It has been added the gz-sim rgbd sensor plugin (https://github.com/ergocub-software/pulls/302).
• ergoCubSN002 and ergoCubGazeboV1_3 has been modified in order to include the neck mk3 (https://github.com/ergocub-software/pulls/311).
• Now the *_minContacts models are usable also in gz-sim since the 0 dimension collision issue has been solved (https://github.com/ergocub-software/pulls/314)

🔘 SkipRecalibration feature

A new group and parameter can now be added to the general.xml configuration file. Specifically we can have a new group called MAINTENANCE, which now host a boolean parameter defined as: skipRecalibration. Moreover, since that parameter is defined with external-name, its value can be also be overridden when launching the yarprobotinterface by adding the option: --skipRecalibration <value> (where <value> can be either true or false).
If enabled it allows a user to skip the calibration procedure on all enabled joints if:

• the joints have completed the calibration correctly the first time
• the boards are not switched-off
  In this manner, if one needs to work on the robot and does not need to change low level parameters, it won't need to continuously re-run the calibration procedure each time the yarprobotinterface restarts but all the joints will be first set in IDLE at the restart, so that one can then move them to the desired control mode.

🔘 Calibration improvements

• Reduced the calibration time.
• If a joint fails either calibration or the attainment of its startup position during the calibration process, the other joints within the same set will then operate with their nominal PWM maximum, as opposed to the restricted value used previously.

🔘 FW Models

• @RaffaelePumpo's first contribution 🎉 was about streamling the computation required to estimate velocity from position feedback.
• The feedforward action in FOC control wasn't really used thus far, but we made sure it is disabled outright by default.
• We recently spotted a disalignment between the FW models and the generated code about the handling of the STATUS message. This PR fixed a regression in this respect.

🔘 Robots Mainteinance

• 🤖 SN023 iCubGrenoble01
• 🤖 SN011 iCubManchester01