Jiminy-py

The interactive mode of `gym_jiminy`, allowing to play with a robot during a simulation using mouse and keyword input, has been greatly improvement in terms of features, reliability, and computational efficiency. Besides, every minor framerate drops of the viewer using Panda3d has been addressed to make the experience more enjoyable. It is now possible to replay more than 10 log files using integrated graphics at solid 30fps.

New features

* [python/viewer] Add option to not lock camera pose but only look-at point when travelling is enabled using Panda3d.

Improvements

* [python/viewer] Display freeflyer external forces by default.
* [python/viewer] Add getter for camera pose.
* [python/viewer] Improve viewer refresh efficientcy by only forcing display update whenever necessary.
* [python/viewer] Add support of frame index to define relative lookup and camera pose.
* [python/viewer] Add repeat capability to 'jiminy_replay' entrypoint.
* [gym/common/envs] More versatile interactive loop helper.
* [gym/common/envs] Add support of gym.wrappers to 'play_interactive'.
* [gym/common/envs] Add 'pause' key to play interactive mode.

Patches and bug fixes

* [python/robot] Fix external forces not properly shared with viewer.
* [python/viewer] Fix interactive loop CPU throttle by adding short sleep in deamon reading stdin.
* [python/viewer] Mix busy loop and timer sleep in precise sleep to release the GIL.
* [gym/common/envs] Fix simulation not stopped when playing ends in play interactive mode.

Miscellaneous

* [gym/examples/rllib] Provide helper to wrap policy as callable[[observation, reward], action].

This release only consists of minor quality-of-life improvements. In addition, a few bugs in Jiminy viewer have been fixed, and a more robust initial guess is provided to the 'impulse' contact solver to improve continuity of contact forces.

Improvements

* [core] Provide robust initial guess to 'impulse' contact solver.
* [gym/common] 'sample' now supports providing both 'shape' and vector 'low'/'high'/'mean'/'scale' if broadcastable.

Patches and bug fixes

* [python/viewer] Fix clicking on node for panda3d Qt widget.
* [python/viewer] Fix seldom lock issues when displaying many robots simultaneously.

Miscellaneous

* [gym/examples/rllib] Start ray backend in local mode in debug.
* [gym/examples/rllib] More robust observation flattening.
* [gym/examples/rllib] Interrupt learning gracefully in case of ray task exception.
* [gym/examples/rllib] Do not replay if recording is disable during training.
* [gym/examples/rllib] Add option to use custom logger.
* [gym/examples/rllib] Add option to save checkpoint every given number of training iterations.

Very small release primarily intended to fix a bunch of bugs introduced in the previous ones. In addition, user-specified standard deviation for model parameters is now relative instead of absolute to be more consistent with the literature, and 'EngineMultiRobot.start' method no longer force reset of the simulation, giving more flexibility to the user, for example to run several simulations using the same model.

Improvements

* [core] 'EngineMultiRobot.Start' no longer reset the engine automatically.
* [core] Biases for random model generation are now relative instead of absolute.
* [python/viewer] Log replay now support overwriting mesh package dir.
* [gym/example] Add option to specify log subdirectory name interactively.

Patches and bug fixes

* [core] Fix computation of center of mass positions and velocities.
* [python/viewer] Fix log replay without velocity and external forces data available.

Miscellaneous

* [misc] Fix CI numpy version issues.

Following the previous release, this one adds new markers to help analyze simulations, especially for locomotion tasks of bipedal robots. It is now possible to display the Capture Point (also called DCM) and external forces. Besides, Reinforcement Learning tools based on RLLib have been improved and a few bugs have been fixed.

New features

* [python/processing] Add convex hull utilities.
* [python/viewer] Add option to display DCM in viewer.
* [python/viewer] Add option to display external linear forces at joint level in viewer.

Improvements

* [core] Add option to register external forces to the telemetry.
* [core] Compute velocity of the center of mass of each subtree systematically.
* [python/processing] Improve efficiency and versatility of 'interpolate_zoh'.
* [python/log] Extract external forces from log if recorded.
* [python/viewer] Improve efficiency of markers update.
* [python/viewer] 'jiminy_replay' entrypoint can now be used to record video.
* [gym/examples] Add monitoring of episode duration.

Patches and bug fixes

* [core] Fix internal update period computation when defined control and sensor update period of the engine without robot.
* [python/robot] Add fallback if 'dynamics' fields 'damping'/'friction' are partially defined in URDF file.
* [python/viewer] Fix default display marker value if backend is not Panda3d.
* [gym/examples] Fix logging performance issues of RLlib.

Miscellaneous

* [gym/examples] Improve documentation of RLlib tools.

This release focuses on making the viewer more informative to ease analysis to control strategies by showing the center of mass and contact forces when replaying log data.

New features

* [python/viewer] Add helper to emulate sensor update from log, and use it in 'play_log_data' method.
* [python/viewer] Add top-level options to enable/disable display of com/contacts.

Improvements

* [core|core/python] Add public setter 'AbstractSensorBase.set' for sensor data and expose it in Python.
* [python/viewer] Add option to place cylinder anchor at bottom in Panda3d.
* [python/viewer] Add option to always display node at foreground in Panda3d, and use it for markers.
* [python/viewer] Add method to show/hide a single node in Panda3d.
* [python/viewer] Custom 'update_hook' can be provided to 'display' and 'replay' methods.
* [python/viewer] 'add_marker' now supports passing callables.
* [python/viewer] Make objects clickable in Panda3d.

Patches and bug fixes

* [python/viewer] Fix error when using exotic matplotlib backends.
* [python/viewer] Fix 'Viewer.add_marker' and 'Panda3dApp.move_node' node placement.
* [python/viewer] Fix 'append_group' when 'remove_if_exits=False'.
* [python/viewer] Do not add legend if replay of the single log.
* [python/viewer] Hide node if scale is too small.

Miscellaneous

* [core] Make sensor setter 'AbstractSensorBase.setAll' private.
* [core/python] 'result_converter' now supports Eigen::Ref.

It is now possible to reconstruct the robot corresponding to a simulation log file. It is also possible to replay it in Jiminy Viewer, as long as the original meshes are still available, if any. In addition, a few issues related to widgets display have been fixed.

New features

* [python/log] Add generic utility to reconstruct robot from log.
* [python/viewer] Add 'jiminy_replay' CLI entrypoint to replay Jiminy log files.

Improvements

* [python/simulator] 'simulate' now supports writing log in any available format.
* [python/viewer] Add option to not remove widgets after replaying trajectories.

Bug fixes

* [core/python] Fix 'buildGeomFromUrdf' module interoperability.
* [python/viewer] Fix default legend when replaying multiple trajectories at once.
* [python/viewer] Fix colors of Panda3d legend.
* [python/viewer] Fix legend in panda3d when using identical labels.

Miscellaneous

* [python/viewer] Reorder default colors cycle.
* [python/viewer] Switch device notifications from 'error' to 'fatal' for Panda3d.
* [misc] Remove dual ABI support for Python bindings since it is unstable and may cause segfault.
* [misc] Provide cmake config version file in wheel.