2023 is off to the races at Viam! We had a busy January working with early customers on their robotics strategy, expanding our documentation and tutorials, sharing and building with the Viam Community (join us on Discord!), improving the Try Viam experience—the best way to take the Viam platform for a spin with zero hardware setup—and, of course, putting in work to advance and improve the Viam platform.
Check out our official release notes here, and see below for a high-level roundup of what we added in January!
New features
1. Add power input to remote control
Users can now set the power of the base from the remote control UI. This sets the power percentage being sent to the motors that are driving the base which determines its overall speed.
- RSDK-938
2. New drivers in the RDK
AM5 Encoder: RDK now natively supports the AM5 encoder. This is the encoder that is included in the SCUTTLE robot.
Improvements
1. Linear acceleration
We added a `GetLinearAcceleration` method to the movement sensor API. This allows us to represent IMUs that are commonly used by hobbyists using the movement sensor interface. Learn more: RSDK-1024
2. Capsule support and improved UR5 Kinematics
We have added support for capsule geometries to our motion planning service. Using this new geometry type, we have also improved our representation of the kinematics of a UR5 arm. Learn more: RSDK-1654
Bug fixes
1. Assertion error
We were previously not able to send error messages over webRTC to the python SDK. This meant that users would see an unhelpful error “Assertion Error” message. Now, we are able to surface those errors so that users have more feedback as they program in Python. Learn more: RSDK-858
