Jiminy-py

The pre-compiled binaries of EigenPy, Hpp-Fcl and Pinocchio have been updated to the latest available releases. In addition, several bugs have been fixed (including a segfault!).

Bug fixes

* [core] Fix flaky memory corruption segfault when adding frame to model.
* [core] Fix special cmake linkage flags 'optimized'/'debug' not being properly detected for Boost.
* [python/simulator] Fix progress bar glitches if simulate raises an exception during a simulation.

Miscellaneous

* [misc] Update pre-compiled binaries of dependencies (EigenPy 2.6.0, Hpp-Fcl 1.6.0, Pinocchio 2.5.5).
* [misc] Fix several cmake edge cases.
* [misc] Enable linker optimizations.
* [core] Take advantage of new features and improved Windows 10 support to simply codebase.

This release introduces a new (experimental!) high-performance and customizable viewer backend based on [Panda3D](https://github.com/ikalevatykh/panda3d_viewer#using-with-pinocchio), which supports both offscreen and onscreen rendering. Yet, some features of Viewer may not be working properly, and offscreen rendering requires X11 server on Linux for now. Notably, it is now possible to add flexibilities at fixed joint frames, and to add coupling forces between frames of the same robot.

Many important new features, breaking changes and critical bug fixes have been introduced since release 1.4.0, so it is time to bump up the minor version tag!

New features:
* [core] Log robot input args, robot urdf content, and all options as constants.
* [core] Enable to add flexible joints at any FIXED_JOINT frame.
* [core] Add composite centroidal rigid-body inertia computation to 'computeForwardKinematics'.
* [core] Enable to add coupling forces between frames of the same robot.
* [python/viewer] Add partial support of Panda3d visualizer.

Improvements:
* [core] Store constants in hdf5 datasets instead of attributes to get around 64K size limit.
* [core] TMLC telemetry format now supports both attributes and dataset field.
* [core] Do not enforce position/velocity limits at init if disable.
* [core] Fallback to not loading/using collision model if meshes are missing.
* [core|core/python] Expose 'computeForwardKinematics'.
* [core/python] Enable to get system from 'Engine'.
* [python/log] Fix print logged variables.
* [python/robot] Fixes some edge cases when automatically generating HDF file.
* [python/robot] Enable explicit robot initialization without hardware description file.
* [python/robot] Skip collision bounding box handling if meshes are not available.
* [python/simulator] Simulator's Viewer instance is no longer private attribute.
* [gym] Make viewer instance directly accessible in pipeline environments.
* [gym] Get access to simulator's attributes directly.
* [gym/common] Add new random sampling utility.
* [gym/common/env] Make sure robot shared memory is reset after calling '_setup'.
* [gym/common/env] Do not log error is observation is out-of-bounds, and only warning in debug.
* [gym/common/env] Make sure the low-level engine memory address does not change.
* [core/python] Avoid memory allocation by 'compute_systems_dynamics' for efficiency.

Bug fixes:
* [core] Fix body forces wrongly computed by 'aba'.
* [core] Fix 'getRigidConfigurationFromFlexible' method of Model class.
* [core] Fix computeSystemDynamics edge case and Python binding signature.
* [core/python] Fix bindings of some system_state object fields.
* [python/robot] Fix support of multiple collision boxes.
* [python/simulator] Fix callback not working since scalar references are now ndarray in Python.
* [python/simulator] Fix 'state' property for 'use_theoretical_state'=True.
* [python/viewer] Fix viewer exception when closing backend during replay.
* [gym/common/env] Fix 'replay' not working.

Miscellaneous:
* [core] Double space before inline comments.
* [core] Add constant for telemetry constant delimiter.
* [core] Clarity telemetry namespace.
* [core|core/python] Rename 'computeSystemDynamics' in 'computeSystemsDynamics' for consistency.
* [core/python] Simplify C++ to Python log converter.
* [python/viewer] Split viewer and replay tools in separated submodules to reduce file complexity.
* [python/viewer] Rename 'replay_speed' in 'speed_ratio' for clarity.

This release adds support of discrete action spaces. It also fixes several non-critical issues related to core, gym, unit tests, and docs.

Improvements:
* [gym] Check if the action/observation are out-of-bounds in debug mode.
* [gym] Forward debug argument for classic control envs.
* [gym] Add back unit test for acrobot and test both continuous and discrete action space.
* [gym] Fix convergence issues of classic control learning unit tests.

Bug fixes:
* [core] Fix velocity bounds not taken into account for unbounded joints.
* [core] Fix successful iteration failure counter not properly reset.
* [gym] Fix support of Discrete space.
* [gym] Fix invalid debug write log format.
* [gym] Fix classic control envs observation space and discrete action space handling.

Miscellaneous:
* [misc] Silent external projects warning for compatibility with Cmake < 2.8.12.
* [misc] Fix Python bindings docstring substitution.
* [core] Display error messages in red instead of green.
* [core] Display warning messages if position/velocity bounds are enabled but not implemented.
* [core/python] Remove useless include.

This release fix several bugs that has been introduced in the previous ones. It also makes it easier to use the newly added color names, legend and watermark options for simulation replay.

Improvements:
* [python/viewer] Add support of 'jpeg', 'svg' formats and url path for watermark.
* [python/viewer] Set max width/height of watermark instead of exact ones to preserve aspect ratio.

Bug fixes:
* [core/python] Engine flag 'getIsSimulationRunning' is now returned by reference, fixing a bug with copy proxy.
* [python/simulator] Fix low-level reset/simulate methods wrongly called.
* [python/simulator] Fix generic time-series 'plot' method if data is missing.
* [python/viewer] Fix tuple urdf_rgba support.
* [python/viewer] Fix legend not showing up in some cases.
* [python/viewer] Fix legend font on Windows.

Miscellaneous:
* [core/python] Split bindings in multiple files to reduce compilation time.
* [python/viewer] Rename logo in watermark for clarity.

This release introduces a new dedicated widgets manager for `Meshcat` that enables to display information on top of `three.js` rendering. Those are captured when taking screenshot or recording videos. In addition, the default format when capturing frames is now `.png`, which is about 30% faster.

New features:
* [python/viewer] Add new dedicated widgets manager. Only legend and watermark are available for now.
* [python/viewer] Enable to capture widgets on top of three.js rendering.

Bug fixes:
* [python/viewer] Force disabling legend if not all robots have colors when replaying trajectories.
* [python/viewer] Fix replay when at least one of the trajectories is empty.

Miscellaneous:
* [python/viewer] Always capture frames in '.png' format.

This release introduces new options for the viewer to display a customizable matplotlib-like legend (draggable!) and a log/watermark on top of Meshcat web-based visualizer.

New features:
* [python/viewer] Add 'legend' and 'logo_fullpath' optional argument to 'play_trajectories'.

Improvements:
* [core/python] Do not use Eigenpy to convert systemState.q/v/a to improve efficiency and preserve constness.
* [gym] Define shared memories/proxies at init when possible.
* [gym/envs] Improve performance of classic control environments (acrobot, cartpole).

Miscellaneous:
* [python|gym] Add Python native 'is_simulation_running' attribute to Simulator for fast access.
* [gym] Replace 'engine' proxy by 'simulator' for greater flexibility.