[moco-announce] Release: Moco version 1.2.0

[Nick Bianco]

Hello Moco users,

I've been receiving lots of questions about MocoOutputGoal on the Moco
forum recently, which made me realize that I never sent out an announcement
for the latest Moco updates! OpenSim 4.4 with Moco 1.2.0 was released this
past summer, and it includes some useful updates to MocoOutputGoal along
with some other additions and bug fixes.

In OpenSim, Output
<https://simtk.org/api_docs/opensim/api_docs44/classOpenSim_1_1Output.htm>s
allow you to query values from a Model that are calculated from a State
object. We created MocoOutputGoal to make it easier to build custom cost
functions in Moco that depend on Output values. In Moco 1.2.0, we've
updated MocoOutputGoal to now support not only scalar Output types, but
also Vec3 and SpatialVec types, which covers the majority of Outputs
offered by OpenSim Components. We've also added new MocoGoals which allow
you to minimize an Output at the beginning of a trajectory
(MocoInitialOutputGoal), an Output at the end of a trajectory
(MocoFinalOutputGoal), the error between initial and final Output values
(MocoOutputPeriodicityGoal), and the error between an Output and a
user-provided trajectory (MocoOutputTrackingGoal). In addition, we added
MocoOutputConstraint to allow you to include Output values in a path
constraint in your problems. Many users have requested more flexibility in
building cost functions in Moco, and these new Output-based goals will give
you many more options to do so.

Other updates include fixes for MocoAngularVelocityTrackingGoal and
MocoOrientationTrackingGoal, which were not properly supported in Matlab
and Python. We fixed a bug that was breaking marker tracking problems when
using 'setMarkersReferenceFromTRC()' in MocoTrack. We fixed a bug where
calculations from MocoStudy's 'analyze()' were incorrect because
DeGrooteFregly2016Muscle auxiliary variables were not properly included.
Finally, we implemented a fix for DeGrooteFregly2016Muscle so that optimal
fiber lengths and tendon slack lengths are scaled when using the ScaleTool.

Get Moco 1.2.0 by downloading the OpenSim 4.4 release from SimTK
<https://simtk.org/frs/?group_id=91>.

More details about this release can be found in the CHANGELOG
<https://github.com/opensim-org/opensim-core/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md> and
CHANGELOG_MOCO
<https://github.com/opensim-org/opensim-core/blob/master/CHANGELOG_MOCO.md>
 files.

Read the Moco paper here
<https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008493>
.

-Nick
-- 
*Nicholas A. Bianco*
Neuromuscular Biomechanics Lab
<http://nmbl.stanford.edu/people/nick-bianco/>|Stanford
PhD Candidate
(772) 284-0354
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