Release Notes: Autonomous Mobile Robot#

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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