MoveIt

MoveIt is an open-source framework for robot motion planning, manipulation, and control, primarily used with the Robot Operating System (ROS). It provides tools and libraries to plan, simulate, and execute motion for articulated robots, such as robotic arms and mobile manipulators. The project integrates with robot descriptions, sensors, and controllers to enable end-to-end manipulation tasks.

MoveIt comprises planning, perception, and execution components. The planning stack offers planning pipelines that connect robot models (robot_description) and the current scene (planning_scene) to motion planners, collision checking, and kinematic solvers. The MoveGroup node exposes a high-level interface for planning and executing motions, while RViz provides visualization and interaction. The software supports inverse kinematics solvers, forward kinematics, and various trajectory representations. It relies on the Open Motion Planning Library (OMPL) for sampling-based planning algorithms such as RRT and PRM, and it can incorporate other planners.

MoveIt is designed to work with ROS, enabling integration with sensing (depth cameras, LIDAR), state estimation, and control loops. It supports planning in joint space and task space, constraints, Cartesian paths, and gripper motions. MoveIt 2 is the ROS 2-compatible version, extending support to ROS 2 ecosystems and newer hardware platforms. The project is maintained by an international community of developers and researchers, and it includes extensive tutorials, examples, and a rich ecosystem of plugins for planning, kinematics, and controllers.

Applications include industrial automation, research, and service robotics, where users seek reliable motion planning for manipulation tasks such as pick-and-place, assembly, and object avoidance.