AICA Core v5.2.0

[eeberhard]

Version 5.2.0 of AICA Core includes new features to AICA Studio and the API with new parameter validation and application manager options alongside a first version of an MCP server for integration with external LLM and AI agents. The rest of the release focuses on diverse improvements for usability and appearance.

AICA Studio

This version introduces several improvements to the application editor and overall user experience in AICA Studio. The editor now supports parameter validation for compatible components or controllers, including fixed options or length, pattern, and value constraints. The application manager table now displays a preview of the application graph on hover and includes more sorting options. Many other improvements and fixes have been made as captured in the full changelog below.

Parameter validation

• Implement parameter validation based on the new extension schema
• Render drop-downs for parameters with fixed set of options
• Treat boolean and incorrectly formatted default values for parameters more strictly
• Implement new boolean array editor
• Generate toasts for invalid parameters
• Add empty option when default is null or optional for enum parameters

Application manager improvements

• Sort labels alphabetically in application manager
• Extend and improve sorting options in application manager
• Implement preview graph on hover
• Implement group by labels functionality

General features

• Update start / stop node icon size
• Auto-focus the password field when switching profiles
• Simplify hardware settings UI
• Add delay when loading tooltips
• Improve missing parameter behavior toasts
• Add better default scopes on profile creation

Fixes

• Fix navbar flickering
• Remove unneeded vertical space in API manager table
• Prevent loss of the application on parse errors in the code editor
• Re-render mini-panel view when adding new hardware
• Clear previous errors in the save modal when trying to save new hardware
• Fix overflow calculation for display names
• Revise the modal confirmation text when deleting labels
• Improve visibility of the selection border of graph nodes
• Adjust layout of mini-icon button groups
• Synchronize auto event toggles between graph and settings view
• Update tagged version toast's text
• Ignore limits in URDFs in visualization in favor of rendering actual joint states
• Prevent transitions and predicates from expanding together or when non-interactive
• Hide Show All on services when non-interactive
• Prevent removing sequence steps from resulting in a crash
• Ensure 3D settings recording options are uneditable when in tagged version
• Pad the Y-axis in live data
• Resolve a race condition when closing application immediately after starting
• Allow existing application descriptions to be removed using the minipanel
• Prevent runtime state badges appearing on nodes when pressing undo after running an application
• Prevent frames disappearing when changing light intensity
• Adjust topic chooser panel width

API

In this version, the API server adds new endpoints for an MCP server to access applications, hardware and extensions. It also implements the responsibility of handling and manipulating URDF content of applications which was previously managed by the Event Engine, while adding a new capability to override the hardware plugin in the URDF.

• Add better user creation checks for LPC
• Add basic MCP integration
• Extract data from application for analytics
• Add URDF modifications capabilities (parameter overrides, tf_prefix, reference_frame)
• Enable replacing hardware plugin in robot description
• Skip log for internal extension descriptions

Event Engine

This is a minor update that reduces the responsibility of the Event Engine to manipulate URDF content. It also refactors the predicate listener to directly push events on the subscription callback instead of polling changes during step.

• Change predicate listener to directly push events on subscription callback
• Remove URDF modifications (parameter overrides, tf_prefix, reference_frame) from event engine

Core Collection

Components

• Validation for maximum velocity in joint point attractor
• Reject zero frequency for marker publishing in base collider

Controllers

• Update tolerance parameters dynamically in the Joint Trajectory Controller
• Update extension descriptions to support parameter validation