Release Notes

• What's New

  Feb 25, 2020

  ZED SDK 3.0 is the first release that supports the brand new ZED 2 camera, improved in every way with wider angle optics, more accurate factory calibration, built-in new generation environmental and motion sensors and industrial grade mounting system and enclosure.

  The SDK 3.0 also introduces new neural depth sensing, improved positional tracking, new AI-based object detection API that detects and tracks objects in 3D, image quality enhancement, performance improvements and a lot more features.

  To update to 3.0 from previous 2.X versions, read the migration guide.

• 3.0.3

  SDK

  • Fixed an issue with recording and streaming with ZED cameras that could lead to a crash of NVENC encoder.
  • Added support in 3.0 for ZED stereo cameras with firmware 1142 on Windows.
  • Fixed Ubuntu16 installer missing turbojpeg dependency.
  • Fixed Qt5 OpenGL/SVG dependencies in Ubuntu installers.

  Tools

  • Added minimum depth distance automatic adjustment in ZED Depth Viewer when GPU has less than 3GB memory.
  • Fixed unresponsive GUI in ZED Sensor Viewer when a ZED camera was connected.
  • Fixed ZED Calibration tool for IMU when using --cimu on Windows.

• 3.0.2

  SDK

  • Improved Spatial mapping performance by up to 200% on desktop and Jetson embedded platforms. Depth fusion is now much faster and the resulting model now refreshes in real-time on most platforms.
  • Improved DEPTH_MODE::PERFORMANCE. It now benefits from neural depth estimation with improved accuracy, edges and cleaner data.
  • Increased DEPTH_MODE::PERFORMANCE speed with a performance boost of up to 15%.
  • Fixed a bug in resetTracking function. The yaw angle defined by the Transform parameter was not taken into account.
  • Eliminated flickering in VIEW::DEPTH image when the scene has very low depth content.
  • Fixed cuDNN reported version on JetPack 4.2. The model failed to run due to an incorrect reported version. It now works correctly.
  • Removed libturbojpeg-0-dev dependency from Ubuntu 16 installer since the package is only available in Ubuntu 18.

  Tools

  • Added new Sensor Viewer tool that lets you display accelerometer, gyroscope, barometer, magnetometer and temperature sensors charts for ZED 2.
  • Added new LiDAR mode view in Depth Viewer. LiDAR mode will be available in the API in ZED SDK 3.1.
  • Added new Confidence 50 view in Depth Viewer. It displays sparser but more confident depth maps.
  • Added new Texture Confidence slider in Depth Viewer. It lets you remove untextured areas such as the sky or white walls from the depth map.
  • Minimum distance settings in Depth Viewer is now saved. It is loaded when the tool is restarted.

  Plugins

  • Updated Unity plugin to support ZED 2 and SDK 3.0.
  • Updated Unreal plugin to support ZED 2 and SDK 3.0 with custom engine based on 4.21.
  • Updated MATLAB plugin to support ZED 2 and SDK 3.0.
  • Updated ROS plugin to support ZED 2 and SDK 3.0.
  • Updated ROS wiki with up to date topics, parameters and services for latest 3.0 wrapper.

  App

  • Updated ZED World AR demo to support ZED 2 and ZED SDK 3.0.

• 3.0.1

  Python

  • Added Python API documentation.
  • Fixed an issue preventing the compilation of the Python wrapper.

  Tools

  • Updated minimum depth range in Depth Viewer to automatically adapt to available GPU memory.

• 3.0.0

  New Features

  Object Detection

  • Added a new module that detects and tracks objects in 2D and 3D, compatible with ZED 2.
  • Added enable/disableObjectDetection and retrieveObjects functions.
  • Added ObjectData class that contains detected object data, such as 2D and 3D bounding box, tracking information, dimensions and 2D mask.

  Depth

  • Introduced neural networks for depth estimation in ULTRA mode to improve stereo depth accuracy. Other modes will be updated in following SDK updates.
  • Introduced new confidence filter that detects homogenous zones. Use textureness_confidence_threshold to remove noisy values in the depth map such as sky or untextured areas.

  Video

  • Added image enhancement setting to provide more vivid and accurate colors. Enabled by default in 3.0.
  • Added image sharpness setting to improve sharpening of live and recorded videos.
  • Updated SVO video format to store new sensors data.

  Sensors

  • Introduced new Sensor API to provide access to data from IMU, barometer, magnetometer and temperature sensors in the ZED 2.
  • Updated documentation and added tutorial to show how to use the different sensors.

  Local Streaming

  • Improved local network streaming of video data between sending and receiving host computers.
  • Video Streaming API is not compatible between 2.8 and 3.0.

  Docker

  • Improved Docker support for all ZED SDK versions.
  • Introduced lightweight runtime Docker images for deployment of Docker applications using the ZED SDK.
  • Updated Stereolabs DockerHub repository with the new images.

  Performance

  • Improved speed of the Depth module by carefully optimizing critical functions on desktop and embedded platforms.
  • Optimized image rectification pipeline.

  Software Support

  • Updated to C++14 (previously C++11)
  • The new Object Detection module uses TensorRT and cuDNN to run efficiently on embedded platforms. The module is dynamically loaded from a separate sl_ai library to avoid the explicit dependency when using sl_zed.

  Platforms

  • Added support CUDA 10.2 and JetPack 4.3.
  • Dropped support for JetPack 3.3 and Windows 7. While ZED may still be used on Windows 7, it is not officially supported.

  Major 3.0 API Changes

  Since there are a lot of changes compared to ZED SDK v2, a migration guide is available to help you switch easily from 2.8 to 3.0.

  General

  • Each enum is now an enum class (forced using TYPE::VALUE, instead of the current TYPE::TYPE_VALUE or even TYPE_VALUE).
  • All deprecated functions/parameters/options have been removed.
  • All libraries are now merged into sl_zed for clarity and ease of deployment.
  • All headers are now merged into a single sl/Camera.hpp.
  • Camera::grab is now blocking (guaranteed to return a new frame).

  Functions

  • SaveAs functions have been replaced by Mat::save().
  • Added getter functions to retrieve any module parameter from Camera, such as getPositionalTrackingParameters.
  • Added static function Camera::reboot() to perform a hardware reset of the camera.

  Video

  • Resolution and FPS information have been moved to Camera::getCameraInformation.
  • The CAMERA_SETTINGS enum is renamed to VIDEO_SETTINGS.
  • Added InitParameters::image_enhancement for better black level correction, AWB adjustment and improved gamma curve
  • Added VIDEO_SETTINGS::SHARPNESS, a digital two-pass sharpening control that improves image quality.
  • Video recording is now automatically handled by the grab function, without having to explicitly call the record() function (now removed).
  • Added a new pauseRecording function.
  • Added RecordingParameters structure.
  • Deprecated RAW and LOSSY compression modes. They have been removed from SDK recording options.
  • AVCHD and HEVC have been renamed into H264 and H265.

  Sensors

  • Added SensorsData class to store the data of all the other sensors present in the new ZED 2 which includes BarometerData, TemperatureData, MagnetometerData and IMUData. It also includes a state; CAMERA_MOTION_STATE which indicates if the camera is static, moving or falling.
  • Camera::getIMUData() has been replaced by Camera::getSensorsData() to reflect the class update. It provides access to all the sensor values.

  Depth

  • Depth range and confidence parameters have been moved into InitParameters.
  • Improved ULTRA mode with better accuracy and contours.

  Positional Tracking

  • Positional Tracking module function have been renamed to include "Positional" to differentiate it from object tracking. For instance: Camera::enableTracking is now Camera::enablePositionalTracking.
  • Spatial memory has been renamed to Area memory for consistency with Area files (enable_area_memory, saveAreaMap)

  Streaming

  • Added StreamingParameters::chunk_size to select the maximum size of each transmitted packet and improve packet transmission.

  Spatial Mapping

  • Removed all deprecated Mesh functions. The overloaded SpatialMap functions that include support for both Mesh and FusedPointCloud should now be used.
  • extractWholeSpatialMap is now smarter if a previously retrieved map is passed as an argument. It will retrieve only the difference between the initial and updated mesh.

  Compatibility

  • Streaming module is not compatible between 2.8 and 3.0.
  • Due to a change in SVO metadata, SVOs recorded with 3.0 will only be compatible with SDK 2.8.4 and upwards.