Release Notes: Autonomous Mobile Robot#

Version 2026.1#

June 17, 2026

New

  • Added automated one-command ROS 2 environment setup scripts (setup-robotics-humble.sh and setup-robotics-jazzy.sh) that install the full AMR stack (ROS 2, OpenVINO, Intel RealSense SDK, Robotics SDK, Collaborative SLAM) for Ubuntu Humble and Jazzy respectively.

  • Added ISX031 industrial camera support in multicam-demo with a new config/config_isx031_4cameras.js configuration file and extended CameraCapWrapper to accept Linux device paths (e.g. /dev/video-isx031-a-0) in addition to integer camera indices.

  • Added Level 2 end-to-end pipeline KPI analysis to ros-kpi via a new analyze_pipeline_latency.py tool that computes per-stage latency, throughput, and drop rate across the full AMR processing pipeline.

  • Added Grafana live metrics dashboard integration for ros-kpi, including a new demo_interactive_heatmap.py script for interactive visualization of KPI data and a GRAFANA_QUICKSTART.md guide for rapid dashboard setup.

  • Added JSON schema files (kpi_level1_v1.json, kpi_level2_v1.json) for structured validation of KPI output data.

Improved

  • ros-kpi: ros2_graph_monitor.py now uses ROS message header timestamps instead of wall-clock time for accurate latency measurement in both real-time and Gazebo simulated environments; added –use-sim-time CLI flag and auto-detection of the /clock topic.

  • ros-kpi: Added –csv-out and –xlsx-out flags to analyze_trigger_latency.py for exporting KPI results to CSV and Excel formats; added a smoke-test suite (tests/test_csv_export.py) for the export functionality.

  • ros-kpi: Standalone wandering-benchmark, picknplace-benchmark, and analyze-benchmark Makefile targets, replacing the former delegating approach; added a Level 2 KPI option (option 6) to the interactive quickstart menu.

  • Multicam-demo: Camera configuration files now support per-camera width, height, and format (FOURCC pixel format, e.g. YUYV, MJPG) fields passed directly to CameraCapWrapper; added –duration flag for headless timed runs; added run summary with per-camera FPS and pre/submit timing statistics; improved async inference thread cleanup on shutdown by draining in-flight inferences.

  • Multicam-demo: Added –no-display flag for fully headless operation and –verbose flag for per-camera frame statistics printed every two seconds.

  • PicknPlace simulation (Gazebo): CMake build for ROS Jazzy corrected by adding find_package for gz-sim8, gz-msgs10, sdformat14, and Protobuf and fixing imported target names; added libprotobuf-dev build dependency; added pytest-based functional test suite covering launch file structure and UR5 robot configuration.

  • Intel oneAPI runtime, compiler, and MKL packages pinned to version 2025.3.* in both collaborative-slam and multicam-demo, preventing unintended automatic upgrades that could break compatibility.

  • Setup scripts hardened with set -o errexit, set -o errtrace, set -o pipefail, and a failure handler ERR trap, so installation failures are reported with the failing step name instead of silently continuing.

  • Setup scripts: Changed all apt calls to apt-get for scripting best-practice compliance; added –allow-downgrades when installing ros-*-librealsense2 to accommodate pinned version constraints; reordered RealSense installation to run the ROS wrapper package before the DKMS kernel module and SDK.

Fixed

  • adbscan (Follow-Me): Initialized new_target_loc to zero before use in adbscan_sub.cpp, adbscan_sub_w_gesture.cpp, and adbscan_sub_w_gesture_audio.cpp, preventing potential undefined behavior when no target has been detected yet; fixed an uninitialized pointer in doDBSCAN.cpp.

  • adbscan: Fixed the license-check Makefile target to reference the public fsfe/reuse:5.0.2 Docker image instead of an internal registry path, allowing license checks to run without internal network access.

  • Multicam-demo: Fixed hardcoded absolute model path (/opt/ros/humble/share/pyrealsense2-ai-demo/…) to use a relative models/yolov8/FP16/… path, restoring compatibility with uv-managed Python environments.

  • Multicam-demo: Fixed generate_ai_models.sh model conversion script to call mo.py directly rather than capturing its output, correcting exit-code handling.

  • Security: Updated opencv-python to 4.8.0.78 in the Follow-Me (adbscan Jazzy) requirements and bumped pillow to >=12.2.0 in ros-kpi to resolve Dependabot-flagged vulnerabilities.

  • ros-kpi: Fixed the Debian packaging rules for both Humble and Jazzy to include the schemas/ directory in the installed package.

  • Removed obsolete deprecated files: collaborative-slam trajectory comparison script (traj-compare.py), ITS planner run script (run_its.sh), and Debian preinst scripts from multicam-demo.

Version 2026.0#

April 01, 2026

Autonomous Mobile Robot has been updated to fully support ROS 2 Jazzy. This brings latest generation ROS support on the latest Intel silicon, enabling workloads to take the advantage of hardware accelerators such as the GPU and NPU.

New

  • Add support for ROS 2 Jazzy across all components.

  • Warehouse Pick-and-Place Simulation

    • Gazebo Harmonic simulation enablement

      • Migrate the warehouse pick-and-place simulation that features two manipulators (UR5) and an AMR from Gazebo Classic (Ignition) to Gazebo Harmonic:

      • Simulation launch/config stack was migrated from the older Classic/Ignition-oriented setup to a Harmonic-compatible Gazebo setup.

      • Runtime wiring was updated so Harmonic simulation components, robot descriptions, and bridges launch coherently in a single flow.

    • Plugin migration and compatibility refactor

      • Core custom simulation plugins (notably conveyor and vacuum tooling) were refactored for Harmonic behavior and plugin APIs.

      • SDF/Xacro model integration was updated to match Harmonic expectations, including resource/material compatibility adjustments.

    • Unified TF architecture for pick-and-place

      • A unified tf2-based frame system was introduced for robots and cubes.

      • New odometry-to-TF publishing was added for Harmonic DiffDrive outputs, ensuring downstream planners/controllers consume consistent transforms.

    • Controller logic moved from static offsets to TF-driven tracking

      • Arm controllers were redesigned to track target cubes from the TF tree instead of relying on hardcoded offsets.

      • Dynamic grasp pose resolution was added, improving robustness when robot/cube transforms vary at runtime.

      • Per-robot namespacing support was added for multi-robot controller separation.

    • MoveIt and manipulator control updates

      • Dedicated controller-manager configs were added for each arm.

      • Joint limits/controller config were reorganized for dual-arm operation.

      • MoveIt execution handling was hardened with longer joint-state wait tolerance and better debug behavior.

    • Robot description and tooling additions

      • New gripper/vacuum-related robot description assets were added (parallel gripper and vacuum examples).

      • URDF/SDF/control fragments were aligned to the Harmonic-ready control pipeline.

    • AMR behavior fixes required by migration

      • Navigation orientation conversion (yaw to quaternion) was corrected in AMR motion logic.

      • State-machine flow gained an explicit idle completion path for clean single-cycle demo termination.

    • Packaging and deployment updates for migrated stack

      • DDS configuration was added for runtime communication consistency.

      • Entry-point/package wiring fixes were applied for new nodes.

      • Debian package revisions were bumped to publish the migration changes cleanly.

  • Collaborative SLAM

    • Add a safe build option and update documentation for memory management:

      • Prevention of system crashes on memory-constrained systems.

      • Support for oneAPI 2025.x/SYCL 8 development.

      • Added optional support for local ORB extractor package input during safe builds to improve compatibility with oneAPI/SYCL version requirements.

      • Updated third-party g2o source integration to use the ROS release repository and added explicit libg2o build configuration for Jazzy packaging.

      • Fully backward compatible.

    • Add the troubleshooting guide.

  • Orb-Extractor

    • Resolved memory issues in liborb, improving stability and reliability under load.

    • Updated SYCL compatibility for Intel 2025.3 and introduced targeted code optimizations.

    • Introduce compatibility checks and adjustments for OPENCV_FREE mode in various test files.

  • ITS Planner

    • Implemented automatic ROS distribution detection across the build and deployment pipeline

    • Updated all configuration files and documentation to support both ROS 2 Humble and Jazzy distributions

    • Added distro-specific environment variable handling GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH vs GZ_SIM_RESOURCE_PATH

    • Enhanced launch scripts with distro-aware package path resolution and configuration management

    • Added distribution-specific nav2 parameter files for optimized performance across ROS versions

    • Removed hardcoded distribution references from documentation and build scripts

  • ADBScan

    • Jazzy + Gazebo Harmonic support enabled

      • Added and updated simulation, launch, model, packaging, and documentation assets to support ROS 2 Jazzy with Gazebo Harmonic.

      • Expanded follow-me simulation coverage across lidar, RealSense, gesture, and audio-assisted launch paths.

    • OpenVINO 2024 compatibility updates

      • Updated audio recognition components and related scripts/configuration to support OpenVINO 2024.

      • Applied changelog updates across multiple packages to reflect OpenVINO 2024 compatibility and related improvements.

    • Dependency and packaging fixes

      • Corrected Humble dependency definitions in simulation package metadata.

      • Updated Debian changelog/control-related package maintenance entries for both Humble and Jazzy package sets.

  • ROS2 KPI

    • Introduced ros2-kpi (v0.1.0), a new monitoring and analysis framework for ROS2 systems.

    • Real-time ROS2 graph monitoring: nodes, topics, message rates, and processing delays across the full pipeline.

    • Automatic per-node input→output latency measurement for every node in the graph — no --node filter required.

    • CPU, memory, and I/O monitoring via pidstat with support for both thread-level and PID-only modes.

    • Cross-machine remote monitoring via SSH and DDS peer discovery (--remote-ip).

    • Interactive visualizations: heatmaps, timelines, core utilization, and scatter plots.

    • ROS bag analysis with per-topic latency tracking and CPU-cycle estimation.

    • Grafana dashboard integration with a Prometheus metrics exporter.

    • Unified entry point (monitor_stack.py) and an interactive quickstart launcher for guided onboarding.

    • Supports ROS2 Humble and Jazzy.

Improved

  • Robot configuration (robot_config)

    • Refactor robot configuration for Gazebo Harmonic compatibility.

    • Update nav2 launch files (humble/jazzy/foxy), warehouse launch, and AMR launch.

    • Update TurtleBot3 waffle SDF models (standard, tray+camera, tray no-camera variants).

  • Pick-and-Place Controllers (picknplace)

    • Replace hardcoded coordinate offsets in arm1_controller with TF tree lookups (tf2_ros).

    • GRASP_Y_ARM is now dynamically resolved at startup via the live TF tree with a fallback.

    • Cube tracking uses lookup_transform rather than manual subtraction.

    • Increase QoS depth from 1 to 10 in moveit2.

  • Debian Packaging

    • Bump package versions: robot-config 2.3-2, picknplace 2.3-2, robot-config-plugins 3.6-2.

  • Orb-extractor

    • Update build dependencies in the control files for Intel oneAPI DPC++ Compiler to version 2025.3.

    • Remove redundant libgpu_orb.so from the package installation files.

    • Adjust the test installation files to skip problematic test targets.

    • Refactor debian/rules to streamline the build process and remove redundant test builds.

    • Enhance the SYCL code to resolve namespace qualification issues and internal implementation errors.

    • Apply the aggressive clean build approach for the SYCL compilation.

    • Update CMakeLists.txt to reflect changes in library linking and compiler settings.

    • Modify test source files to accommodate changes in OpenCV compatibility and removed deprecated OpenCV includes.

    • Increase Device count.

    • Use direct memory allocation instead of memory pool for increased stability.

  • ITS Planner

    • Update all README files to support both Humble and Jazzy distributions.

    • Update the launch scripts with distro-aware package paths and configurations.

    • Enhance the nav2 parameter files with distro-specific settings.

    • Remove hardcoded Humble references throughout documentation.

    • Improve the collab_slam script with automatic ROS environment detection.

  • ADBScan

    • Update CMakeLists.txt to support both Humble and Jazzy with Gazebo Harmonic on Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04 respectively.

    • Update Makefile to include the turtlebot3_simulations package for Jazzy builds.

Fixed

  • Debian Packaging

    • Fix debian/rules executable permissions (from 644 to 755) across all packages (required by dpkg-buildpackage).

  • Orb-Extractor

    • Fix a memory leak.

  • Pick-and-Place Controllers (picknplace)

    • Fix node namespace - from /ARM2Controller to /arm2/ARM2Controller.

    • Fix amr_goto_pose in amr_controller to use proper yaw-to-quaternion conversion: (sin(yaw/2), cos(yaw/2)) instead of raw z=0.004.

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