v0.4.0

Highlights:

• add QuaternionSpherical and Planar joint types (#309, #306)
• add support for storing position, velocity, and effort limits in Joints and parsing them from URDFs (#305, thanks @rdeits). Note that these limits are currently not used in the dynamics function.
• add more angular and linear methods (which should be used instead of accessing members directly)
• add normalize_configuration!(::MechanismState)
• add a modification count to Mechanism and use it in MechanismState functions to check that the Mechanism hasn't been modified since construction of the MechanismState
• code reorganization/cleanup: extracted out Spatial and CustomCollections submodules

Notable deprecations and breaking changes:

• made Joint immutable (#312, fixes #310)
• deprecate name function. Use base.string instead
• remove last remnants of camelCase from the package. This includes:
  • renaming the frameBefore and frameAfter fields of Joint to frame_before and frame_after (accessible via functions with the same names).
  • renaming the gravitationalAcceleration field of Mechanism to gravitational_acceleration
  • renaming the maxRealtimeRate keyword argument of simulate to max_realtime_rate.
• attach! functions now use keyword arguments. Deprecation warnings will help you update existing code to the new syntax.

v0.3.0

Release notes:

Highlights:

• significant performance improvements: mass_matrix, inverse_dynamics, and dynamics are respectively 40%, 57%, and 11% faster. The biggest improvements are due to the introduction of TypeSortedCollection (#237, #247, #269, #293) and due to faster cache-staleness checks (#253, #254, #294).
• remove fixed-maximum-size matrix code (StaticArrays/Base type piracy)
• get rid of <:Number requirement for all types, mainly to support JuMP variable/expression types (#276).
• add support for user-defined joint types (as opposed to only allowing QuaternionFloating, Revolute, Prismatic, and Fixed) (#247)
• export dynamics_bias[!] (#295)

Notable deprecations and breaking changes:

• drop Julia 0.5 support
• geometric_jacobian[!] now returns/expects a GeometricJacobian with a number of columns that is equal to the number of velocities of the state, instead of the number of velocities of the kinematic path from the base to the body (#269)
• DynamicsResult type parameters have changed order, to be more consistent with MechanismState. New constructor syntax for MechanismState and DynamicsResult. Deprecation warnings should help you transition to the new syntax. (#248, #286, #295 )
• Joints are now parameterized on their JointType to allow joint-type-specific dispatch without resorting to @rtti_dispatch (#247). The old Joint{T} is now equivalent to GenericJoint{T}, an exported type alias. Note that methods called on GenericJoints that depend on joint type will generally allocate due to dynamic dispatch.
• MechanismState is now additionally parameterized on the type of its TypeSortedCollection of Joints, to allow static dispatch based on joint types. (#247, #258)

v0.2.0

Highlights:

• add 0.6 (rc3) support.
• add basic penalty-based contact dynamics (point to world-fixed half-plane only at this point).
• improve geometric_jacobian and momentum_matrix functionality: allow specification of frame in which they are expressed, add non-allocating versions.
• introduce UnsafeFastDict and type aliases BodyDict and JointDict; use in MechanismState and in inverse_dynamics-related functions for performance without losing much convenience.
• change Transform3D to be parameterized on underlying array type. Don't exploit sparsity by having a separate rotation and translation field anymore; just use a 4x4 matrix, since this allows for faster concatenation on recent machines with AVX instructions. Rotation and translation can be accessed using rotation and translation functions
• add Wrench constructor given a force and an application point.
• add point_velocity function.
• reduce allocations in kinetic_energy, center_of_mass to zero
• simplify constraint Jacobian structure in MechanismState: now it's just a Vector of TreePaths, instead of an opaque sparse matrix of Ints.
• minor improvements to Graphs module (e.g. iteration over and printing of TreePaths)
• add findbody, findjoint (RigidBody and Joint lookup by name)

Bug fixes:

• #188
• #225
• #226
• #211 (bug was introduced after previous release)

v0.1.0

Highlights:

• better support for closed-loop mechanisms (switch from tree + non-tree edges to directed graph + spanning tree representation in Mechanism). See #181 for details.
• switch to native HTML generation for documentation.
• some effort towards supporting Julia 0.6 (need StaticArrays updates for full support).
• optional throttling in MuntheKaasIntegrator. Can be used to limit the speed of simulations, e.g. when realtime (but not faster-than-realtime) visualization is desired.

v0.0.6

Bug fix release:

• fix allocation in colwise by inlining
• fix #169
• fix #170

v0.0.5

Highlights:

• non-allocating momentum_matrix! method
• streamline Mechanism type, including moving body-fixed frame definitions from Mechanism to RigidBody
• add basic documentation using Documenter.jl, including quickstart guide
• add partial support for parallel Mechanisms (kinematic loops)
• add symbolic dynamics example (using SymPy.jl)
• improve @framecheck error message

Fixed issues:

• #110
• #158