Announcements

• New tutorial on nonlinear programming (#12744)
• The C++ Doxygen pages are somewhat less cluttered now (#12795, #12796)

Breaking Changes since v0.15.0

These are breaking changes that did not undergo a deprecation period:

• Drake no longer supports user-defined scalar types (#12657, #12797, #12823, #12816, #12825)
  • See issue #12814 for more details.
• Removed the ability to override LeafSystem allocation methods (#12792)
  • Subclasses should use the model vector (or model value) APIs to declare state, parameters, etc. instead of overriding these virtual methods.
• Removed pydrake.examples.AcrobotPlant.CalcPotentialEnergy (#12794)
• Removed pydrake.examples.AcrobotPlant.CalcKineticEnergy (#12794)
• Renamed RigidBodyTree-based implementation of drake::manipulation::planner::ConstraintRelaxingIk to drake::manipulation::planner::ConstraintRelaxingIkRbt (#12732)
• Removed godotengine build rules (#12826)

Changes since v0.15.0:

Dynamical Systems

New features

• Allow specific cache entries to be initially disabled (#12803)
• Systems reject ContinuousState that they did not create (#12630)
• Added math::IsPositiveDefinite (#12813)
• Added first implementation of general region of attraction code (#12827)

Fixes

• Diagrams now report correct state counts (#12701)

Mathematical Program

No changes in this release.

Multibody Dynamics

New features

• Added more MultibodyPlant intermediate calculations to cache
  • Shift vector p_PoBo_W to cache (#12724)
  • spatial acceleration bias Ab_WB and ABA bias Zb_Bo_W (#12716, #12750)
• Improved error message for invalid spatial inertia (#12766)
• SpatialInertia support for massless bodies (#12809)
• Velocity-implicit Euler integrator in progress (#12543, #12740)
• Added doc about the availability of force/torque sensor (#12791)
• Added support for derivative of signed distance between a pair of geometries (#12720)
• Added build system skeleton for forthcoming OpenGL render engine (#12623)
• Implemented Composite Body Algorithm to compute the mass matrix (#12764)
• Discrete-mode MultibodyPlant is faster, particularly in cases with branched kinematics, due to incorporation of Composite Body Algorithm in the discrete solver (#12838)
• New hydroelastic contact model in progress (#12597, #12699, #12751, #12763, #12745, #12730, #12840)
  • Still only experimental
  • Improve performance
  • Improve architecture

Fixes

• Got rid of accidental heap allocation within CalcArticulatedBodyForceBiasCache() (#12728)
• Alphabetized targets in geometry/proximity/BUILD (#12748)
• Quarantined FCL’s haphazard use of const in broadphase (#12746)
• Fixed catastrophic cancellation in point mass unit inertias (#12758)

Miscellaneous features and fixes

• Add the capability to visualize collisions in geometry_inspector (#12736)
• Add operator« to sorted_pair (#12801)
• Fixed allegro_hand discrete update period (#12734)
• Improve the simple_gripper example to make it possible to test more integrators (#12742)
• Added more methods to symbolic::Polynomial (#12835)
• Fixed accidental quadratic parsing of Yaml (#12830)

pydrake bindings

• pydrake.systems.framework.System.EvalKineticEnergy (#12794)
• pydrake.systems.framework.System.EvalPotentialEnergy (#12794)
• pydrake.systems.primitives.DiscreteDerivative (#12770)
• pydrake.systems.primitives.StateInterpolatorWithDiscreteDerivative (#12770)
• Fixed pydrake.solvers.ScsSolverDetails numpy-typed fields (#12737)
• Fixed pydrake.solvers.SnoptSolverDetails numpy-typed fields (#12737)

Build system and dependencies

• GCC 7.5 is now Ubuntu’s default compiler (#12845)
• Added new dependency on OpenGL on Ubuntu only (#12623)
• Use system Eigen >= 3.3.4, not downloaded bitbucket tag (#12784, #12780)
• Upgraded bazel minimum and recommended versions to 2.0 and 2.1 respectively (#12729)
• Upgraded buildifier to latest release 2.0.0 (#12836)
• Upgraded fcl to latest release (#12762)
• Upgraded ghc_filesystem to latest release 1.3.0 (#12799)
• Upgraded styleguide to latest commit (includes cpplint changes) (#12765, #12800, #12776)
• Fixed missing load() in drake_bazel_installed support (#12605)

Newly-deprecated APIs

• APIs:
  • drake::examples::kuka_iiwa_arm::EncodeKeyFrames (#12732)
  • drake::examples::kuka_iiwa_arm::IiwaContactResultsToExternalTorque (#12732)
  • drake::examples::kuka_iiwa_arm::VerifyIiwaTree (#12732)
  • drake::manipulation::planner::ConstraintRelaxingIkRbt (#12732)
  • DRAKE_DECLARE_COPY_AND_MOVE_AND_ASSIGN (#12735)
  • DRAKE_DEFINE_DEFAULT_COPY_AND_MOVE_AND_ASSIGN_T (#12735)

Removal of deprecated items

• APIs
  • drake::geometry::Capsule::get_length (#12781)
  • drake::geometry::Capsule::get_radius (#12781)
  • drake::geometry::Cylinder::get_length (#12781)
  • drake::geometry::Cylinder::get_radius (#12781)
  • drake::geometry::Ellipsoid::get_a (#12781)
  • drake::geometry::Ellipsoid::get_b (#12781)
  • drake::geometry::Ellipsoid::get_c (#12781)
  • drake::geometry::Sphere::get_radius (#12781)
  • pydrake.attic.multibody.rigid_body_tree.RigidBodyTree.number_of_positions (#12781)
  • pydrake.attic.multibody.rigid_body_tree.RigidBodyTree.number_of_velocities (#12781)
  • pydrake.geometry.Capsule.get_length (#12781)
  • pydrake.geometry.Capsule.get_radius (#12781)
  • pydrake.geometry.Cylinder.get_length (#12781)
  • pydrake.geometry.Cylinder.get_radius (#12781)
  • pydrake.geometry.Ellipsoid.get_a (#12781)
  • pydrake.geometry.Ellipsoid.get_b (#12781)
  • pydrake.geometry.Ellipsoid.get_c (#12781)
  • pydrake.geometry.Sphere.get_radius (#12781)
  • DRAKE_SPDLOG_TRACE (#12781)
  • DRAKE_SPDLOG_DEBUG (#12781)
  • drake/multibody/tree/multibody_tree_element.h header (#12781)
• Examples:
  • Double pendulum (#12725)
  • PR2 Passive Simulation (#12708)

Notes

This release provides pre-compiled binaries named drake-20200311-{bionic|mac}.tar.gz. See Stable Releases for instructions on how to use them.

Drake binary releases incorporate a pre-compiled version of SNOPT as part of the Mathematical Program toolbox. Thanks to Philip E. Gill and Elizabeth Wong for their kind support.