Release Notes

• What's New

  Mar 31, 2020

  ZED SDK 3.1 introduces new Camera control features such as Gamma adjustment for low-light environments and ROI (region of interest) selection for Auto Exposure/Gain.

  Onboard sensors capabilities can now be accessed, including data such as sensors resolution, sampling rate, noise density, transforms, etc.

  Depth map temporal stability and Quality mode have also been improved, along with many other bug fixes and improvements.

  To update to 3.1 from previous 2.X versions, read the migration guide.

• 3.1.2

  SDK

  Improvements

  • Improved greatly streaming and recording FPS on NVIDIA Jetson. Frame drops have been reduced from 15% to 1% when using HD720@60fps with streaming or recording module enabled on Jetson Nano.
  • Fixed a bug in H264/H265 SVO playback: The first frame was not correctly read and replaced by the second frame. This is now fixed and consistent with previous SDK versions.
  • Added a security in object detection maximum perception distance. Depth maximum distance is now clamped at 100 meters to avoid memory overflow when using object detection.
  • Added security and warnings when input parameters (InitParameters, StreamingParameters,...) are out of range.

  Plugins

  • Improved and fixed zed-docker ROS images. see here

• 3.1.1

  SDK

  Improvements

  • Fixed random jumps in ZED Mini IMU data. This was due to invalid timestamps that were sometimes generated.
  • Fixed depth and normals maps in SENSING_MODE::FILL mode with confidence at 100. NaN or Inf values have been removed.
  • Fixed a coordinate system issue in the object detection module. In certain coordinate systems, the distance between the left and right camera eyes was not set correctly, leading to invalid objects and position.
  • Added a warning message when requested FPS is out of range (HD2K with fps=30 for example).
  • Fixed a random camera opening issue that could return a wrong serial number and an ERROR_CODE::INVALID_CALIBRATION_FILE error in open().
  • Fixed required CUDA version declaration in the CMake file.
  • Fixed Windows installer splash screen that could be displayed incorrectly.

  Tools

  • Fixed IMU firmware update in ZED Explorer which was broken in 3.1.0. It now works correctly.

  Plugins

  • Updated MATLAB plugin with 3.1 features.
  • Updated Unreal plugin with 3.1 features.
  • Added beta support of URP pipeline in the Unity plugin.
  • Added beta support of HDRP pipeline in the Unity plugin.
  • Fix dependencies issues in some ZED Docker images (Ubuntu 18 was missing libgomp).

• 3.1.0

  SDK

  New Features

  • Added new VIDEO_SETTINGS::GAMMA control to adjust gamma level of the camera. Can be very helpful in low light environments.
  • Added new VIDEO_SETTINGS::AEC_AGC_ROI control to select a region of interest for auto exposure/gain adjustment. Exposure and Gain levels will be automatically optimized for the ROI and not for the full image. This is useful in high dynamic range scenes, for example when indoors and outdoors areas are visible at the same time. See setCameraSettings(sl::VIDEO_SETTINGS,sl::Rect,sl::SIDE) function for more information.
  • Updated Camera Control sample to show how to use new Gamma and ROI features.
  • Updated CameraInformation structure to improve availability of Camera, Sensors configuration and calibration information.
    • Added SensorParameter structure to access accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, barometer configuration (resolution, sampling rate, noise density...).
    • Added stereo_transform (extrinsics stereo parameters) in user COORDINATE_SYSTEM and UNITS.
    • Updated camera_imu_transform to user COORDINATE_SYSTEM and UNITS.
  • Added compression level option in Mat::Write() function to adjust quality and size of PNG and JPG files.
  • Added new Sensor Tutorial for reading sensor data and configuration.

  Improvements

  • Improved temporal stability and denoising of depth map.
  • Improved accuracy of QUALITY depth mode.
  • Improved performance when using the Object Detection module with the masks enabled.
  • Jetson installation process has been improved. The installer now detects if it's running within Docker to skip any unnecessary steps. Object detection optimized AI model is now downloaded instead of being optimized on the host, making setup much faster.
  • Improved cuDNN version handling.
  • Added Debug compilation mode detection to warn about compatibility issues when mixing with Release libraries.

  Bug Fixes

  • Fixed resetPositionalTracking() that was not taking into account user-defined values for the yaw angle.
  • Fixed Object detection AI model optimization that could lead to a corrupted model file. Additional checks have been added to handle file corruption.
  • Fixed getCameraSettings() behavior when using Streaming input type. Now settings are available even if setCameraSettings() has not been called before.
  • Fixed getDeviceList() on Windows. When multiple camera were connected, DeviceProperties of one of the camera were wrong.
  • Fixed multiple SVO recording in a single session. If enableRecording() was called again after disableRecording(), the SVO file was not correctly recorded.
  • Fixed setSVOPosition() for H264/H265 SVO files that could return an image at an incorrect position.
  • Fixed 3D Object Detection AI model optimization on Jetson Nano by increasing swap file size during the installation process.
  • Improved robustness and reliability of the Object Detection AI model optimization process on all platforms.
  • Improved compatibility with Darknet framework by adding undef GPU to solve the conflict with the macro and the SDK enumerate values.

  Python API

  • New Video features (Gamma, ROI selection), Camera and Sensors information added to the Python API.
  • To facilitate the Python API installation, it is now compiled for each platform. The installer includes a Python script that automatically downloads the right version for your PC. See the new Installation doc for more information.
  • Fixed issue with get_sdk_version() that returned an empty string.
  • Fixed Export_SVO sample which didn't set the SVO input correctly.
  • Fixed several getters functions that required input-output arguments instead of returning it (does not break the API).

  Tools

  • ZED Explorer: Improved SVO playback. Slider can now be used anytime during video playback. - Yes, this should have been the case from the start.
  • ZED Explorer: Added Exposure/Gain ROI selection to the main UI window. Draw a rectangle with the mouse on the left image to adjust Exposure/Gain for this specific ROI.
  • ZED Depth Viewer: Add toggle buttons to set Depth Confidence at 50 and the new Texture Confidence at 90. Depth and Texture confidence are still accessible through the settings window.

  Plugins

  Docker

  • Added Python API to all Docker desktop images.
  • Added Jetson Python API specific image variants including, py-devel, py-runtime and tools-devel that are optimized to run with limited storage space (e.g. Jetson Nano).
  • Added Jetson runtime optimized images and ros-devel images (previously only devel was available).
  • Added NVIDIA_DRIVER_CAPABILITES declaration in each image. It should now better control which driver features (e.g. compute, graphics) are exposed to the container.
  • Reduced devel images size by removing unnecessary tools and graphics libraries (moved to gl-devel images).
  • Improved Docker Docs and Troubleshooting section.
    See Stereolabs DockerHub repository for all available images.

  ROS

  • Added new package zed_interfaces with isolated declarations of custom messages, services and actions.
  • Removed world_frame parameter.
  • Removed publish_pose_covariance parameter, now covariance for pose and odometry is always published.
  • Removed _m from parameters mapping/resolution_m and mapping/max_mapping_range_m.
  • Renamed the parameter depth_resample_factor to depth_downsample_factor.
  • Renamed the parameter img_resample_factor to img_downsample_factor.
  • Renamed the parameter odometry_db to area_memory_db_path.
  • Renamed the parameter frame_rate to grab_frame_rate.
  • Added new dynamic parameter pub_frame_rate to reduce Video and Depth publishing frequency irrespective of Camera FPS.
  • Added new dynamic parameter gamma for Gamma Control.
  • Added new dynamic parameter depth_texture_conf to filter depth according to textureness information.
  • Added new TF frames for all the sensors available on ZED 2.
  • Added topics to publish grayscale images.
  • Added topic to publish Camera to IMU transform: /<camera_name>/<node_name>/camera_imu_transform
  • Default value for depth_confidence changed from 100 to 50.
  • Added base_frame as launch parameter to propagate the value of the parameter in the Xacro description.