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Announcements

The default DiscreteContactApproximation for MultibodyPlant has been updated to kLagged.
- This approximation integrates engineering-quality, physics-based models into our convex formulations, providing strong convergence guarantees. The resulting SAP formulation is both robust and high-performing, while preserving physical accuracy. Refer to Castro et al., 2024 for further details. Keep in mind that this may cause different simulation results, and users who rely on a specific contact approximation might need to update their code and/or modeling assumptions (#21294).
Drake now officially supports macOS 15 Sequoia (#22324).
On macOS, Ipopt is now compiled from source instead of using Homebrew (#22331).
- One consequence is that MUMPS is no longer available as one of Ipopt’s linear solvers. The only available linear solver is SPRAL.
For Bazel users, Drake has been ported to Bazel modules instead of repository rules (#22338, #22432).
- Please start porting your project to the new technology. See the drake_bazel_external example for how to use this from your project.
- Refer to the comments in drake/tools/flags/BUILD.bazel to see new flags you can use to govern the dependencies.
- After Drake has good support for modules, we plan to deprecate Drake’s repository rules for removal. For updates, follow #20731.
When building from source with CMake, the default value for WITH_USER_EIGEN and WITH_USER_FMT and WITH_USER_SPDLOG is now ON. In other words, CMake will use find_package to locate dependencies, instead of pkg-config (#22421).
YAML load/save can now handle bytes and paths (#22288, #22318).
Drake now uses AVX512 instructions (when available) for hand-coded Highway (SIMD) functions. (#22423). To opt-out for reproducible results, see DRAKE_DISABLE_CPU_FEATURES.

Breaking changes since v1.36.0

InitialValueProgram changed the data type of some static constants (#22358)
Remove LinearModelPredictiveControl (#22306)
If downstream C++ code calls RenderEngine::Clone and the runtime type of the RenderEngine is a downstream Python subclass, then the call will now throw an exception. The C++ call must be updated to opt-in to the shared_ptr template argument. (#22353)
InverseDynamicsController::get_output_port_control() now reports the actuation on joint actuators instead of generalized forces on all joints. The generalized forces on all joints are still reported, but through get_output_port_generalized_force() (#22315)

Refer to our Drake Stability Guidelines for our policy on API changes.

Changes since v1.36.0

Dynamical Systems

New features

Add SparseMatrixGain as a primitive system (#22314)
Add DiagramBuilder overloads for shared_ptr (#22347)
Add LuenbergerObserver and KalmanFilter support for shared_ptr (#22351)
Add PidControlledSystem and RgbdSensorDiscrete support for shared_ptr (#22347)
Add SteadyStateKalmanFilter overload to accept the context by-const-ref (#22351)

Fixes

Fix JointStiffnessController to output actuation instead of generalized_force (#22329)
Fix InverseDynamicsController to output actuation instead of generalized_force (#22315)

Mathematical Program

New features

Add MathematicalProgram::AddQuadraticCost w*‖x-x_d‖² (#22424)
SolverOptions is serializable to/from YAML (#22078)

Fixes

Change solver names to upstream’s preferred case (#22407)
Fix MobyLCPSolver to use Drake logging not cerr (#22359)
IpoptSolver by default now uses SPRAL (not MUMPS) (#22385)
Relax the tolerance in IpoptSolver (#22426)

Multibody Dynamics and Geometry

New features

Add a Parser::scene_graph() accessor (#22317)
Implement ref for joints in MuJoCo parser (#22446)
Add functionality to create Convex shapes from vertices and enable geometry::VPolytope to use it to create its corresponding Convex shape. (#22390, #22442)
AddUnitQuaternionConstraintOnPlant also adds the constraint that quaternion variables lie in [-1,1] (#22373)
Implement AddMultibodyPlantConstraints() that maps from the constraints used in MultibodyPlant to the constraints used in MathematicalProgram (#22327)
Use AddMultibodyPlantConstraints in InverseKinematics (#22361)
Add RenderEngine support for shared_ptr (#22353)

Fixes

Fix “more than one orientation” error in mujoco parser (#22387)
Fix a throw from RotationalInertia in debug mode (#22401)
Improve Mujoco parser’s error message for “size from mesh” (#22389)
Make SAP the default discrete contact solver (#21294)

Planning

New features

None

Fixes

None

Tutorials and examples

None

Miscellaneous features and fixes

Improvements to YAML serialization:
- Add support for std::filesystem::path and pathlib.Path (#22288)
- Add support for drake::FileSource (#22288)
- Add support for YAML’s !!binary tag (#22318)
  - In C++ the type is std::vector<std::byte>.
  - In Python the type is bytes.
- Fix Python yaml_dump_typed for Union on str (#22394)
Add PiecewiseConstantCurvatureTrajectory (#22214)

pydrake bindings

New features

Add binding for MultibodyPlant::GetActuationFromArray() (#22356)

Fixes

Fix diagram memory leaks (#22221, #22343)

Build system

Officially support macOS 15 Sequoia (#22324)
The command line option --define=DRAKE_WERROR=ON no longer has any effect (#22335)
The DRAKE_OS environment variable no longer has any effect (#22432)
Use AVX512 instructions when available (#22423)

Build dependencies

Require Bazel >= 7.4 (#22305)
Use MODULE.bazel for all dependencies (#22338)
- Modular Bazel builds use eigen, fmt, spdlog from bzlmod by default (#22432)
CMake builds prefer find_package over pkg-config (#22421)
Provide new Bazel flag to opt-out of spdlog entirely (#22432)
Provide new Bazel flags to control solver dependencies (#22393)
Add rules_java external (#22305)
Add rules_shell external (#22305)
Use ipopt_internal on macOS (previously was Ubuntu-only) (#22331)
Use py_cc_toolchain for configuring pybind11 (#22346)
Update styleguide to latest commit (#22409)
Upgrade abseil_cpp_internal to latest commit (#22375, #22411)
Upgrade crate_universe to latest (#22310)
Upgrade crate_universe to latest (#22375)
Upgrade curl_internal to latest release 8.11.1 (#22376)
Upgrade dm_control_internal to latest release 1.0.26 (#22375)
Upgrade drake_models to latest commit (#22321, #22408)
Upgrade ipopt_internal to latest release 3.14.17 (#22388)
Upgrade lcm to latest release v1.5.1 (#22458)
Upgrade mypy_internal to latest release 1.14.1 (#22375)
Upgrade rules_rust to latest release 0.56.0 (#22319)
Upgrade rules_cc to latest release 0.1.0 – for MODULE only, not WORKSPACE (#22432)
Upgrade tinygltf_internal to latest release 2.9.4 (#22375)
Upgrade vtk_internal to latest commit (#22384)
Remove vendored libcrypt from wheel builds (#22392)
(macOS only) Upgrade Python venv lockfile to latest versions (#22381)

Newly-deprecated APIs

Subclassing drake::multibody::MultibodyPlant (#22397)
Setting the drake::solvers::IpoptSolver solver option named linear_solver to the value mumps (#22385)
drake::solvers::MathematicalProgram::GetSolverOptionsDouble() (#22078)
drake::solvers::MathematicalProgram::GetSolverOptionsInt() (#22078)
drake::solvers::MathematicalProgram::GetSolverOptionsStr() (#22078)
drake::solvers::MobyLCPSolver::SetLoggingEnabled (#22359)
drake::solvers::SolverOptions::CheckOptionKeysForSolver() (#22078)
drake::solvers::SolverOptions::GetOptionsDouble() (#22078)
drake::solvers::SolverOptions::GetOptionsInt() (#22078)
drake::solvers::SolverOptions::GetOptionsStr() (#22078)
drake::solvers::SolverOptions::GetOptions() (#22078)
drake::solvers::SolverOptions::GetSolverIds() (#22078)
drake::solvers::SolverOptions::common_solver_options() (#22078)
drake::solvers::SolverOptions::get_max_threads() (#22078)
drake::solvers::SolverOptions::get_print_file_name() (#22078)
drake::solvers::SolverOptions::get_print_to_console() (#22078)
drake::solvers::SolverOptions::get_standalone_reproduction_file_name() (#22078)
drake::solvers::SolverOptions::operator<<() (#22078)
drake::solvers::to_string(const &SolverOptions) (#22078)
drake::systems::controllers::JointStiffnessController::get_output_port_generalized_force() (#22329)
drake::systems::controllers::JointStiffnessController output port named generalized_force (#22329)
drake::trajectories::Trajectory virtual interface for subclasses (#22395)
- Subclasses are no longer allowed to override public virtual methods. They must now override the NVI (“non-virtual interface”) protected methods, e.g., do_cols() instead of cols().
pydrake.common.yaml.yaml_load_typed behavior with certain implicit primitive conversions (#22410); the following behaviors are deprecated:
- writing a bool in a document and loading it into an int;
- writing a bool in a document and loading it into a float;
- writing a bool in a document and loading it into a string;
- writing an int in a document and loading it into a bool;
- writing an int in a document and loading it into a string;
- writing a float in a document and loading it into a bool;
- writing a non-integral float in a document and loading it into an int;
- writing a float in a document and loading it into a string;
- writing a string in a document and loading it into a bool.
@python//:python label in Bazel (#22346)
@python//:python_direct_link label in Bazel (#22346)
The @cc external (#22335)
The @common_robotics_utilities external (#22334)
The @ipopt external (#22331)
The @voxelized_geometry_tools external (#22334)

Removal of deprecated items

//manipulation/util:meshlab_to_sdf (#22368)
//manipulation/util:show_model (#22368)
drake::geometry::ReadObjToTriangleSurfaceMesh overload that takes a std::istream (#21914, #22368)
drake::multibody::FrameBase (#21891, #22368)
drake::multibody::MultibodyPlant::set_discrete_contact_solver() (#20672, #21294)
drake::systems::sensors::RgbdSensor::X_BC (#21937, #22368)
drake::systems::sensors::RgbdSensor::X_BD (#21937, #22368)
drake::systems::sensors::RgbdSensor::X_PB (#21937, #22368)
drake::systems::sensors::RgbdSensor::color_render_camera (#21937, #22368)
drake::systems::sensors::RgbdSensor::depth_camera_info (#21937, #22368)
drake::systems::sensors::RgbdSensor::depth_render_camera (#21937, #22368)
drake::systems::sensors::RgbdSensor::parent_frame_id (#21937, #22368)

Notes

This release provides pre-compiled binaries named drake-1.37.0-{jammy|noble|mac-arm64}.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.