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Release Notes

Feature docs deliberately describe only the system as it exists — never how it got that way — so that every page reads standalone. This page is the one place where change context lives: what changed, from what, and why.

The published site shows only the notes for the docs version you are viewing. To read another version's notes, switch versions with the selector in the header. Versioned release-notes pages exist from 0.19.0 onward; notes for older releases (0.18.0 and earlier) live on the GitHub releases page.

0.20.7 — 2026-08-30

  • Fixed 404s on every README-sourced docs page. The exclude_docs pattern intended to hide the repo-root README.md used gitignore semantics, so it silently excluded every README.md in the tree — 404ing the System Test Suite (/tests/), OSMO Lab Admin Guide (/osmo/), and all autonomy package reference pages. The pattern is now anchored to the repo root (/README.md).
  • Shared docs links now show real previews. Sharing docs.theairlab.org in Slack/WhatsApp/iMessage previewed as "Redirecting" — preview scrapers don't run JavaScript, and the site root, the version root (/0.20/), and every content page lacked Open Graph metadata. The root redirect now deploys from a template with proper title/description/image tags (mike set-default -T), a build hook enriches the version-root redirect stub, and a theme override (docs/overrides/main.html) plus site_description add per-page Open Graph / Twitter Card tags across the site. Note: previously shared links may keep the stale preview until the apps' link caches expire.
  • "Edit this page" button on every docs page. Each page now shows a pencil icon (Material content.action.edit + edit_uri) linking to GitHub's editor for that page's source file; contributors without write access get GitHub's fork-and-propose flow. Pages built from main link to edit/main/, the develop docs to edit/develop/ (via DOCS_EDIT_URI in the develop deploy workflow).

0.20.6 — 2026-08-29

  • Release notes now carry a dated section per hotfix. Added the missing sections for hotfixes 0.20.1–0.20.5 and codified the rule in the bump-version-and-release skill and AGENTS.md: every hotfix on main — docs-only and CI-only included — adds its own dated ## X.Y.Z — YYYY-MM-DD patch-notes section, since the MAJOR.MINOR docs build renders all of a line's patch sections together.

0.20.5 — 2026-08-29

  • Docker images are publicly pullable. The AirLab Harbor registry project (airlab-docker.andrew.cmu.edu/airstack) is now public: pulling the AirStack images no longer requires an AirLab account or docker login. Pull instructions across the docs (Getting Started, CLI docker usage, Isaac Sim / MS-AirSim image management) were updated accordingly. Pushing images still requires logging in with an AirLab account.

0.20.4 — 2026-08-29

  • Docs site root pinned to the release slug. docs.theairlab.org now redirects to the current MAJOR.MINOR slug (/0.20/) instead of the moving /main/ alias, so the URLs readers land on and copy stay valid across future releases.

0.20.3 — 2026-08-29

  • Stable docs alias renamed latest → main, restoring pre-0.20 bookmark URLs. The three docs deploy workflows now share a concurrency group so concurrent gh-pages pushes no longer race.

0.20.2 — 2026-08-29

  • Docs versions use MAJOR.MINOR slugs. The version selector no longer shows the same release twice: docs deploy under slugs like /0.20/ titled with the full patch version, hotfixes republish the slug in place, and this Release Notes page renders every section sharing the built version's MAJOR.MINOR.

0.20.1 — 2026-08-29

  • Fixed the post-release main→develop sync skipping when the merge result was content-identical to develop — the ancestry-advancing merge commit was never pushed, so develop's VERSION never rolled forward after a release.

0.20.0 — 2026-08-29

  • Pre-release versioning terminology: -alpha.N → -dev.N. The development line on develop now uses X.Y.Z-dev.N pre-release versions (first: 0.21.0-dev.0) instead of X.Y.Z-alpha.N. The check-version-increment PR gate accepts exactly dev, beta, rc (ordering dev < beta < rc < release); the main→develop sync workflow rolls develop forward to the next minor's -dev.0 after a release. Docs, skills, and the PR template were updated to match. Existing -alpha.N versions in git history and in declared module-compat ranges remain valid historical references.

  • Single, revamped repo README. The repo now has one README.md (at the root — docs/README.md was removed), rewritten around the redesigned docs home page: quickstart, one-command bring-up, sim-to-real parity, CI flight campaigns, and agent-driven workflows.

  • Module-catalog sync automation + drift alarm. Registering a module is two merges (registry PR to airstack-modules-index

  • trunk fixture/catalog sync), and the docs deploy regenerates the published catalog from the live registry — so a missed half used to drop the module from the site silently. Now the develop docs deploy raises a docs-catalog-drift issue whenever the committed catalog and the live registry disagree, and the new sync-modules-index workflow (daily + manual dispatch) opens the trunk sync PR automatically (.github/workflows/scripts/registry_sync.py).

  • Trustworthy system-test outcomes. A red system-tests run now always means the code under test got worse, never that CI infrastructure hiccuped: run_meta.json (schema v2) classifies every failure as assertion / infrastructure / collection / ci_integrity, and CI fails only on those — comparable numeric metric deltas (Hz, CPU, error metrics) are advisory in the report and no longer fail the PR. Metric comparisons only happen between fingerprint-identical campaigns (same tests and same behavior-changing CLI config: sim, robot count, trajectories, velocities, tolerances), with the baseline selected from recent base-branch artifacts by fingerprint instead of "newest artifact of any shape". Bring-up/readiness failures fail fast when the simulator process dies (instead of burning the full /clock timeout on an ephemeral GPU pod) and capture a bounded, secret-free diagnostics/ bundle before the pod is destroyed. Maintainers can dispatch focused flight campaigns (trajectory_types, takeoff_velocities) from workflow_dispatch. New airstack up --config-only: dry-run restricted to logical launch-config contracts (no Docker/credentials/image/submodule prerequisites).

  • CI un-redded: Metrics Report and Unit Tests fixed. Every PR had been failing since ~2026-08-20 for reasons unrelated to the code under test. The system-tests Metrics Report job installed only tabulate, so tests/parse_metrics.py (which imports the tests/harness package) crashed with ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'yaml' — and the crash was misreported as "Metric regression detected"; the job now installs tests/requirements.txt, and the regression verdict additionally requires a written report.md so a parser crash can never masquerade as a metric regression. The Unit Tests workflow ran the tests/meta/ contract suite on a checkout with no submodules and no omni_pass.env, so every airstack up --dry-run --sim isaac contract hard-failed preflight and the docs-catalog contract missed the submodule-resident vdb_mapping_ros2 README; the workflow now checks out submodules recursively and provisions the same guest omni_pass.env stub that module-system-tests.yml uses (preflight itself stays strict).

  • New reference stack full_mighty + registered mighty module. The MIGHTY Hermite-spline local planner (MIT ACL, RA-L 2026) with its acl-mapping voxel world model and a NavigateTask/trajectory_controller bridge, packaged as the external asm_mighty module (pinned at v0.1.1 in the stack's modules.repos; repo private until the AirStack agent study concludes). full_mighty is full_default with only the local-planner include swapped — the module-swap demonstration for the modular architecture. Registered in the module catalog; validated on Isaac Sim (44/44 vendored gtests, empty-world route flight, 7/7 pillar-field traversals, 5/5 judged obstacle-route flights at 1.59–1.65 m min clearance vs a 1.0 m gate).

  • Fixed: the docs search dropdown rendered behind the nav-tabs bar and the version-selector text (custom z-indexes inside the header's stacking context); the search subtree is now lifted above both.

Documentation overhaul (Diátaxis restructuring). The docs site was audited against the Diátaxis framework and reorganized; page URLs are preserved (moves are covered by redirects):

  • The nav is now organized by document kind — Tutorials / How-to Guides / Reference / Concepts tabs — replacing the difficulty-tier ("Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced Tutorials") buckets, which contained no tutorials. The doc-authoring standards (Documentation Guide, mkdocs skills) now prescribe the quadrant taxonomy and include a decision tree.
  • 18 verified doc/code mismatches fixed, including: a phantom --recreate flag and missing --scene in the CLI reference; phantom ROBOT_LAUNCH_PACKAGE/ROBOT_LAUNCH_FILE env vars (real: LAUNCH_PACKAGE); nonexistent airstack_msgs/TrajectorySegment/TrajectoryOverride types in doc templates (real: TrajectoryXYZVYaw); the MS-AirSim tmux window ordering (bridges launch before PX4) and MAVLink port math; the Getting Started Foxglove step (layout now auto-seeds; manual import retired).
  • Removed superseded pages with redirects: the Ascent-era scene-setup pair, the pre-harness testing-frameworks page, the orphaned tutorials index and two stale duplicate pages (development_environment, airstack-cli index). The git-hooks docker-versioning READMEs are now deprecation notices — the hook they described conflicts with the semver check-version-increment gate (note: airstack config git-hooks still installs it; CLI removal is a follow-up).
  • Pages that documented never-built or fabricated behavior were rewritten from the code: global planning (the unimplemented Global-Manager/ PlanRequest protocol is gone), the robot interface page (state flows via odometry_conversion), robot configuration, HITL (now uses the gcs-real hitl profile and Foxglove verification), rosbags, and the robot-side data-offloading page (now points at the storage-tools workflow).
  • Hybrid pages split by audience: system_architecture.md (explanation core; drifted topic tables replaced with links into the interface conventions spec), CI/CD (new Using CI how-to), GCS Foxglove (new Extending the Visualizer), Isaac Sim docker (new Container Workflows). Duplicated hot tables (topics, CLI flags, pytest marks, requirements) now live in one canonical home each.
  • Previously off-site references added to the nav: the vehicle.yaml and module.yaml schemas, local calibration contract, the RViz tasks/waypoint panel manuals, the LiDAR point-cloud filter README, and the OSMO lab-admin guide. New reference pages: the complete .env schema, the airstack_msgs interface reference, the trajectory-library YAML format, and a supported-platform matrix. New/rewritten onboarding: Deploying to Hardware and Operating the GCS.
  • The Interface Conventions Specification was bumped to v1.0.1: §8 now lists all eight task_msgs actions (added tasks/coverage and tasks/chat, both defined with no shipped executor).
  • Six new how-to guides: Adding a State Estimator, Adding a Planner, Creating a Multi-Agent Coordination Algorithm (grouped under a new How-to → Autonomy section), Creating a Custom Stack Topology, Adding a Vehicle Type/Unit/Platform, and Getting the Most out of Your Coding Agent (the feature-notebook workflow). Each presents the in-tree package vs airstack module create --in-tree module-scaffolding choice. The Concepts tab now sits directly after Tutorials, and the UE→Isaac export tutorial was refreshed (new walkthrough video, export as Z-up in meters, note that UE Decals — paint markings, dirt, puddles — do not export).
  • Five new beginner tutorials completing the learning path: Fly a Mission from the GCS, Change a Parameter (the edit→relaunch loop; config YAML is symlink-installed from the bind-mounted source, so no rebuild), Write Your First Module (airstack module create --in-tree scaffold, with a fix-it note for the scaffold's double-namespace stub), Your First Fleet (two-robot fleet file, per-robot Foxglove tabs), and Build and Fly Your Own Scene (GUI stage → scene catalog → --scene flight → baked *.scene.usd). New how-to: Adding a Controller (verified trajectory_controller → pid_controller → interface command chain); Adding a Planner expanded into Adding a World Model and Planner (local world-model/planner matched pairs vs the spec'd global map interchange).

This release restructures AirStack from a monolith into modules, stacks, and fleets, implementing RFC #379 (Modular AirStack) scales 1–2 of RFC #380 (Heterogeneous AirStack), and the stack-folder anatomy of RFC #385 (Directory Atlas). Feature docs deliberately cite none of these — the design sources live here:

  • Modules are thin external repos with a small module.yaml, pulled on demand: airstack module add <url> --version <pin>. Three capabilities were extracted from trunk into new repos: asm_macvo (with its torch/TensorRT stack moved out of the base robot image — 17.1 GB → ~6 GB, −65%), asm_optitrack (including the Isaac Sim NatNet emulator), and asm_dfm2_disturbances. The registry lives at castacks/airstack-modules-index.
  • Stacks (stacks/) are self-contained topology folders — pinned modules.repos, plain XML entry launch files, and a CI-observed wiring.md graph baseline. Wiring that used to be spread across per-layer *_bringup packages (local_bringup, onboard_all, and the local*.launch.xml variant files) now lives in one place: the selected stack's entry launch file.
  • Module provenance: asm_dfm2_disturbances originates from the DFM2 ("don't fool me twice") AirStack fork, hand-built as the pilot module before the tooling existed (its FRICTION_LOG.md records every manual step; the port drops omni.isaac.dynamic_control in favor of the PhysX simulation interface). asm_optitrack was extracted from the trunk OptiTrack PR series (#359/#374/#375/#376) with git history preserved; its unit/integration/e2e tests run in the module's own CI.
  • Fleets (config/fleets/) declare who exists, which vehicle, which stack, and which ground hosts run split-stack halves: airstack up --fleet <name>.

Launch-path changes (breaking)

  • AUTONOMY_ROLE is removed. The env-var role dispatch (full/onboard/offboard) is gone; a set AUTONOMY_ROLE is a preflight hard error (as is setting it alongside --stack, which previously let the stack silently win). Stacks are the only dispatch: airstack up --stack <name>[:<entry>], defaulting to full_default. The per-role launch trees (onboard_all/, onboard_local_offboard_global/) are deleted, the wrap-then-flatten migration is complete (every reference stack composes flat module-launch includes; the launch-lint allowlist is down to the two deliberately wrapped blocks: interface.launch.py and the DDS-router/ gossip helpers). Migration map:

    Before Now
    no role set / AUTONOMY_ROLE=full full_default (default; machine-proven graph-identical)
    full + local_droan_cpu.launch.xml variant --stack full_droan_cpu (variant file deleted; wiring captured from it before deletion)
    local_macvo_obstacle_avoidance.launch.xml variant --stack full_macvo — the variant was broken three ways (unprefixed args silently ignored, stale disparity topic, launch_macvo never enabled); the stack fixes all three
    AUTONOMY_ROLE=onboard (no split) --stack lite_default (on the desktop profile the onboard role was unreachable anyway — robot-desktop hardcoded full)
    onboard/offboard split pair --stack lite_offload_global:onboard / :offboard
    - The split onboard/offboard deployment is now the lite_offload_global
    stack (:onboard / :offboard entries) bridged per its bridge.yaml;
    the DDS-router config is generated by tools/gen_dds_router.py rather
    than hand-maintained. The generated bridge deliberately drops the legacy
    split's set_trajectory_mode crossing (control-mode topics may not cross
    a bridge — airstack doctor hard gate).
    - Module launch files are remap-free and declare prefixed, described
    arguments with canonical defaults; generically named arguments (like
    config_file) were renamed with per-module prefixes because ROS 2 launch
    configurations are global across includes.
    - Shared DDS-router configs moved out of the per-role onboard_all/ tree up
    to autonomy_bringup/config/.
    - OptiTrack activation changed: trunk's
    overrides/isaac-optitrack-simulation.env and the LAUNCH_NATNET toggle
    are gone (a set LAUNCH_NATNET draws a preflight warning). Mocap is
    brought up by a stack that includes natnet_ros2 unconditionally — the
    asm_optitrack module's test_stack/ is the reference.
    - SKIP_MACVO / SKIP_TENSORRT build args removed from Dockerfile.robot
    along with the payload they gated; MAC-VO deps enter an image only via
    airstack module lock --build. stacks/full_macvo includes the module's
    own macvo.launch.xml (the in-tree perception/macvo_ros2 copy is
    deleted; the module preserves its git history, and fixes the previously
    hardcoded camera_info subscription to honor its topic parameter).

Added

  • airstack up --stack <name>[:<entry>] stack dispatch with 5 reference stacks under stacks/ (full_default, full_droan_cpu, full_macvo, lite_default, lite_offload_global), each carrying pinned modules.repos and a CI-observed wiring.md graph baseline
  • Module CLI — airstack module add <url> --version <tag|sha> (branches refused; local paths allowed), list|sync|remove|create --in-tree|doctor, workspace overlay of module packages, and auto-generated module compose overrides included by airstack up; Docker module layers composed via modules.lock (airstack module lock --build)
  • Fleet system: airstack up --fleet <name> driven by config/fleets/*.yaml (identity, vehicle from config/vehicles/, stack selection, spawns) with hosts: split-stack placement onto ground hosts; airstack fleet list|generate per-robot compose for heterogeneous fleets; airstack sync reconciles airstack.yaml (modules, external stack repos, fleet validation)
  • airstack doctor [--live|--snapshot] [--stack NAME] — observe-and-report checks with exactly two hard gates (module dependency-conflict gate; bridge gate: no control-setpoint / trajectory-group topics may cross a split-stack bridge); --live diffs the RUNNING ROS graph against the stack's committed wiring.md
  • airstack stack list|new <src> <dst>|diff <a> <b> (diff compares generated wiring, not launch XML)
  • tests/meta/ contract-test tier (unit mark) pinning the CLI/docs/stack contracts, plus the wiring system-test mark: an observed wiring snapshot of the running graph drift-checked against the stack's committed stacks/<name>/wiring.md
  • Split-stack bridging: stacks/lite_offload_global/bridge.yaml explicitly lists every boundary crossing and tools/gen_dds_router.py generates the DDS-router config from it deterministically (--check enforces the bridge hard gate)
  • New docs: Modules, Stacks, Fleets, Module CI guides, the generated Module & Stack Catalog marketplace, and the Modular AirStack Walkthrough
  • Intent flags on airstack up — --sim isaac|airsim|simple, --robots N, --headless, --play/--no-play, --no-autolaunch, --wait, --dry-run — deriving the coordinated env-var sets as exported leaf values, with a resolved-config banner and a per-run .airstack/runs/<ts>/effective_config.env dump; contract-tested
  • airstack up --scene <shortname>: simulator-agnostic scene selection via a new catalog (simulation/scenes.yaml, resolved host-side by simulation/resolve_scene.py). Isaac maps shortnames to Pegasus catalog keys or Nucleus USD URLs (exported as ISAAC_SIM_SCENE + ISAAC_SIM_STAGE_SCALE; the example launch scripts and fleet_spawn.py now resolve their scene from these instead of hardcoding env_url); MS AirSim maps to fetch_scene.sh keys (MS_AIRSIM_SCENE — the entrypoint's auto-fetch, previously Blocks-only, now fetches any catalog scene, and an interactive airstack up asks before a multi-GB download). The fetch_scene.sh catalog was corrected to the UE4 binaries that actually exist in the AirSim v1.8.1 release: forest, soccerfield, and building99 were removed (their zips were never published, or are empty), airsimnh now downloads AirSimNH.zip (was the nonexistent Neighborhood.zip), and africasavannah / msbuild2018 were added; the entrypoint resolves the UE launcher by glob after extraction, so zips whose inner .sh doesn't match the folder name still boot. Unknown scene = error + per-simulator availability table. Five stages were published to the guest-readable omniverse://airlab-nucleus.andrew.cmu.edu:443/Public/AirStack/Stages/ (AbandonedFactory, AbandonedWarehouse day/night, ChemicalPlant, ConstructionSite, RetroNeighborhood) and cataloged with per-stage scale. See Simulation Scenes
  • airstack ready (and airstack up --wait): staged flight-readiness gates mirroring the system-test budgets — containers → sim /clock → per-robot sentinel nodes → PX4 MAVROS-connected + local_position/odom streaming — with per-gate diagnostics and --json for scripts
  • Preflight validation in airstack up on resolved configuration (env > --env-file > .env): one-simulator guard, NUM_ROBOTS>1 vs single-drone Isaac script as a named hard error, missing images listed with an image-pull hint, missing omni_pass.env / empty Pegasus submodule / Docker < 29 surfaced on the host (AIRSTACK_SKIP_PREFLIGHT=1 downgrades errors to warnings)
  • tmux pane output mirrored to container stdout via shared .tmux.conf hooks, so docker logs / airstack logs show colcon builds, ros2 launch output, sim loading, and crashes
  • simple-sim as a first-class simulator: airstack up --sim simple and a simple_sim smoke-test mark (it had been broken since the ROS Jazzy migration — its container sourced a Humble path — and is fixed)
  • Automatic unit-tests.yml PR gate on ubuntu-latest, plus run_meta.json outcome metadata so reports distinguish completed simulation campaigns from collection errors, empty selections, timeouts, and cancellations
  • Feature notebook workflow (use-feature-notebook skill): gitignored notebook/NNN-feature-slug/ entries whose design_spec.md and results_summary.md populate feature PR descriptions
  • Battery and telemetry display in the GCS control panel (voltage and percentage per robot when the MAVROS battery topic is bridged)
  • TARGET_ARCH build arg (default x86_64) in Dockerfile.robot; docker-compose.yaml passes TARGET_ARCH: aarch64 to the voxl and l4t real-robot image builds
  • ros-${ROS_DISTRO}-mavros-extras in the robot image (provides the vision_pose plugin used for external-pose deployments)
  • overrides/l4t-px4-realrobot.env — site-agnostic deployment override for a single real PX4 robot on a Jetson (aarch64/l4t)
  • integration test tier (tests/integration/, integration mark) with a shared robot_autonomy_stack fixture (robot container, no sim/GPU)
  • waypoint_flight system test: takeoff → ordered waypoint route via NavigateTask → land, judged on the odometry track by the standalone tests/waypoint_checker.py; the standard acceptance check after integrating or swapping a planner module
  • Foxglove auto-loaded layout: render_layout.py seeds the rendered NUM_ROBOTS-matched layout directly into the Foxglove desktop app's local layout store and gcs.launch.xml selects it via the layoutId deep link, so Foxglove opens on the right layout with no manual Import from file... step; user-saved edits are hash-detected and never overwritten (delete the layout in the UI to reset). Requires the pinned Foxglove version — see Changed

Changed

  • The simulator now starts playing by default: PLAY_SIM_ON_START defaults to true in .env (was false). Pass airstack up --no-play to come up paused and press Play yourself; --play remains available as an explicit override
  • Container autolaunch (robot desktop/voxl/l4t and GCS) now runs through an autolaunch shell helper instead of a bare bws && sws && ros2 launch chain: a build failure or launch crash prints an unmissable red "AUTOLAUNCH FAILED" banner in the tmux pane (mirrored to docker logs / airstack logs) instead of silently returning to a prompt with the stack down
  • Dockerfile.gcs pins the Foxglove desktop version (FOXGLOVE_VERSION build arg, currently 3.0.0) instead of installing latest, since the layout auto-load writes the app's on-disk local-layout record format directly (verified against 3.0.0; re-verify before bumping the pin)
  • robot-desktop image slimmed 17.1 GB → ~6 GB (−65%) by moving MACVO's torch/TensorRT/weights into the asm_macvo module Docker layer; a further dependency purge removed unused apt/pip packages (−152 MB) and droan_gl's GL dependencies are declared explicitly
  • Isaac launch scripts deduplicated onto a shared pegasus_app.PegasusApp base: the scripts become scenario declarations (~40–170 lines each, net −438 lines) with hooks for NatNet/scene-import extras; behavior verified by full system-test parity. ISAAC_SIM_HEADLESS and ISAAC_SIM_LIVESTREAM work uniformly in every launch script (each was honored by only half of them before)
  • Launch-workflow docs corrected against actual behavior: ISAAC_SIM_SCENE (nonexistent) replaced by ISAAC_SIM_SCRIPT_NAME/ISAAC_SIM_GUI, getting-started reflects the paused-by-default sim and Foxglove UI, isaac docker.md defaults match .env, ms-airsim MAVROS ports/FOV/vehicle naming fixed
  • Unit-test documentation matches the co-located layout: C++ gtests run via colcon test under the build_packages mark; Python via the root harness (conftest.py applies the unit mark by file location)
  • The CI orchestrator polls a repos: list (one instance covers trunk and every asm_* module repo; the singular repo: key still works) — module CI jobs on airstack-ephemeral no longer need per-repo orchestrator instances
  • Ephemeral CI GPU runners spawn via NVIDIA OSMO as a drop-in replacement for the earlier OpenStack-Nova backend: the GitHub side (labels, JIT tokens, fork guard) is unchanged; only the spawn target moved. The OSMO service-account token plays the old application-credential role, osmo workflow exec replaces SSH-via-floating-IP debugging, and the runner image prebakes what cloud-init used to install at boot
  • Pegasus launch scripts drive lidar through the RTX OmniLidar API (add_rtx_lidar_subgraph) in place of the Ouster graph path, with ROS topics reconciled (raw cloud on …/sensors/ouster/point_cloud_raw, filtered on …/sensors/ouster/point_cloud)
  • The airstack-osmo SSH config block for OSMO IDE sessions is StrictHostKeyChecking no + UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null (replacing accept-new); users with the earlier block should replace it and run ssh-keygen -R "[localhost]:2200" once
  • Default system-test --sim is isaacsim; pass --sim msairsim to opt in
  • -m build_packages CI runs pull cache_* images instead of baking sim images; docker-build.yml retags unchanged images on VERSION bumps (content fingerprint) instead of always rebuilding
  • Automatic OSMO validation runs the pull-only build_packages gate on every PR update; GPU simulation campaigns are selected through /pytest or workflow_dispatch
  • robot-l4t compose service knobs are env-overridable (FCU_URL, rosbag path via BAG_STORAGE_PATH); FCU_URL unquoted so the literal serial path reaches MAVROS
  • zed-l4t image: ZED SDK 4.2 → 5.2 with coupled ROS deps (zed_msgs 5.2.1, point_cloud_transport(_plugins) 4.x, backward_ros)
  • Unit tests are defined by tests/colcon_unit_test_packages.yaml
  • Repo-wide relicense to BSD 3-Clause Clear (vendored packages keep their upstream licenses); airstack_msgs stabilized at 1.0.0; every package.xml carries a real maintainer and description (contract-tested)
  • DOCKER_IMAGE_BUILD_MODE=prebuilt is a tag discriminator only; a real prebuilt-workspace image stage is future work
  • The repository CHANGELOG.md is removed in favor of this page — all change records live here, per version
  • Docs policy: standalone snapshots. Feature docs describe only the current system; all change-relative language (including RFC citations) coalesces here. A full docs audit applied the policy and corrected pages that had drifted from the code, notably: bag recording is NOT auto-triggered at takeoff (the recorder starts idle; toggle via /{robot_name}/bag_record/set_recording_status); tracking_point / look_ahead carry airstack_msgs/msg/Odometry (older docs said geometry_msgs/PointStamped) and trajectory topics are airstack_msgs/TrajectoryXYZVYaw; MAVROSInterface targets any MAVLink-compatible FC (the documented Ascent/Ardupilot specificity does not exist in code); the RobotInterface command topic is cmd_pose; the DDS-router allowlist table is regenerated from the real config; the Jetson install flow is ./airstack.sh setup + the robot-l4t service. Two orphaned pages documenting the behavior-tree framework (behavior_tree, behavior_executive — packages removed in an earlier release, PR #332; only behavior_tree_msgs remains) were deleted; the behavior layer is drone_safety_monitor with mission sequencing via GCS-sent task goals

Removed

An audit removed dead or superseded code wholesale. Anything here is recoverable from git history, and hardware-specific capabilities return as out-of-trunk modules:

  • The AUTONOMY_ROLE launch dispatch and its per-role launch trees — stacks are the only launch path
  • MACVO extracted to castacks/asm_macvo; OptiTrack/NatNet extracted to castacks/asm_optitrack (client, PX4 external-vision fusion, NatNet emulator + Isaac wrapper, e2e/integration tests, env overrides)
  • px4_interface + vendored px4_msgs — a native PX4 uXRCE-DDS interface is tracked as a fresh design in #387; MAVROS remains the flight interface
  • waypoint_interface, attitude_controller(+_msgs) — dead code
  • The RQT/RViz GUI set: rviz_behavior_tree_panel (with the xdot_cpp submodule), rqt_behavior_tree_command, rqt_behavior_tree, rqt_gcs, rqt_airstack_control_panel — Foxglove is the GCS surface
  • Sensors-layer hardware packages camera_param_server, gimbal_stabilizer, sensor_interfaces (lidar_point_cloud_filter remains)
  • WinTAK / TAK integration (ros2tak_tools, CLI plumbing, GCS image dependencies) — can return as a module
  • Isaac Sim standalone_examples copies, stale robot-docker helpers, the ensemble_planner skeleton, the Gazebo parallel-bringup tree, and pre-co-location test scaffolding
  • trajectory_library's vestigial rqt selector (catkin-era GUI source, plugin.xml, setup.py, launcher script — never installed by its CMakeLists), the orphaned behavior-tree docs images, and an empty integration-testing stub page
  • tests/goldens/wiring/ — wiring baselines live per-stack as stacks/<name>/wiring.md

Fixed

  • airstack up guards (one-simulator, URDF pairing) validated .env only and were bypassed by --env-file; they now check the resolved configuration
  • pytest tests/ collects the co-located unit tests before mark filtering (CI previously collected 97 of 252 items, so the Python unit tests ran nowhere); empty CI pytest arguments no longer recurse the repository; non-comparable artifacts are reported instead of false 0% results
  • barebones_pegasus_launch.py crashed with NameError: os; isaac-sim-livestream produced a black stream with multi-drone scripts; NATNET_BODY_NAME/NATNET_TARGET_NAME overrides now work
  • Isaac Sim image: PX4 ubuntu.sh no longer fails dpkg configure on the NVIDIA base; robot image pins pytest<8.1 and disables launch_testing for colcon unit tests
  • Robot identity: a pre-set ROBOT_NAME is honored; the name-map catch-all maps to unknown_robot (valid ROS namespace token) and logs a warning naming both fixes; inert ROBOT_NAME/ROS_DOMAIN_ID lines dropped from overrides/l4t-px4-realrobot.env
  • l4t robot image: dustynv's /ros_entrypoint.sh replaced with a passthrough so stale prebuilt fastcdr libs no longer crash apt-built nodes like MAVROS; the GeographicLib egm96-5 geoid is asserted at build time (MAVROS dies at startup without it)
  • Bag recording: RECORD_BAGS=true now actually starts the recorder on a robot; recorder status is bridged in the correct direction so GCS indicators work; ros2 bag record --exclude updated for Jazzy's --exclude-regex (multiple excludes alternated into one regex)
  • OptiTrack/NatNet: NATNET_SERVER_IP is forwarded to the robot container; the default tracked body matches the emulator; EKF2 external-vision parameters are passed as PX4_PARAM_* so PX4 actually fuses mocap; external-vision tuning corrected from real-flight bags (EKF2_EV_DELAY 7.0, EKF2_EVP_NOISE 0.05); an unrecognized connection_type fails at startup instead of silently falling back; MODELDEF drone-body count is cross-checked against NUM_ROBOTS after the handshake; the emulator is installed as a Kit extension so launch scripts can import it

Landing page & simulation camera/lighting (alpha.13)

  • Docs landing page redesigned around four demonstrated pillars (one-command bring-up, sim-to-vehicle code parity, full-stack CI, agent readiness): real quickstart commands with copy buttons, the actual airstack ready checklist, a live test-mark matrix, and a fresh autoplay hero video (Isaac full-warehouse and office, Foxglove's live 3-robot trajectory traces, MS AirSim neighborhood and ZhangJiajie) — 40 s / 5.4 MB, replacing the 37 MB splash GIF. Per-simulator and Foxglove clips are embedded in their docs sections, and the architecture image is now an unedited full-system desktop capture (sim + GCS + CLI, live).
  • Isaac launch scripts grew camera/spawn/lighting env knobs (pegasus_app.py, plumbed through the isaac-sim compose service): ISAAC_SIM_FOLLOW_CAM / _OFFSET — a smoothed viewport chase camera tracking a drone via live Pegasus vehicle state (also fixes the black viewport at spawn on cm-authored stages; on by default, off disables); ISAAC_SIM_SPAWN_XY — recenter the spawn row away from a cluttered scene origin; ISAAC_SIM_LIGHT_BOOST — multiply the scene's own lights (de-instances light-bearing subtrees first, so e.g. the NVIDIA office's 121 instanceable ceiling lights become editable); ISAAC_SIM_FOLLOW_CAM_LIGHT — headlight riding the follow camera; ISAAC_SIM_DOME_LIGHT — dome-light intensity/exposure override.