[ros-users] Announcing MoveIt!

Sachin Chitta sachinc at willowgarage.com
Thu May 9 13:43:28 UTC 2013 

[image: moveit logo] <http://youtu.be/vAeEEoxVhAo>

http://youtu.be/vAeEEoxVhAo

Willow Garage is proud to announce the initial release of MoveIt! : new
software targeted at allowing you to build advanced applications
integrating motion planning, kinematics, collision checking with grasping,
manipulation, navigation, perception, and control. MoveIt! is robot
agnostic software that can be quickly set up with your robot if a URDF
representation of the robot is available. The MoveIt! Setup Assistant lets
you configure MoveIt! for any robot, allowing you to visualize and interact
with the robot model quickly.
MoveIt! can incorporate both actual sensor data and simulated models to
build an environment representation. Sensor information (3D) can be
automatically integrated realtime in the representation of the world that
MoveIt! maintains. CAD models can also be imported in the same world
representation if desired. Collision-free motion planning, execution and
monitoring are core capabilities that MoveIt! provides for any robot.
MoveIt! updates its representation of the environment on the fly, enabling
reactive motion planning and execution, which is essential for applications
in human-robot collaborative environments.

MoveIt! interfaces with controllers through a standard ROS interface,
allowing for ease of inter-operability, i.e. the ability to use the same
higher-level software with a variety of robots without needing to change
code. MoveIt! is architected to be flexible, using a plugin architecture to
allow users to integrate their own custom components while still providing
out-of-the-box functionality using default implementations. Furthermore,
the ROS communication and configuration layer of MoveIt! is separated from
core computational components such as motion planning or collision
checking, the latter components being provided separately as C++ libraries.

Workspace analysis tools allow robot designers to test out the capabilities
of their robot designs before building the hardware, using environment and
object specific task specifications to quantify the workspace
characteristics of different designs. This reduces costly mistakes and
iterations in the design stage. We are actively working on completing the
pick and place capabilities in MoveIt!, integrating with object
recognition, perception, and grasping to allow manipulators to execute
generalized pick and place actions.

*Get MoveIt!*

More Information about MoveIt!, including instructions on how to get and
use it, can be found on the MoveIt! website <http://moveit.ros.org>.
MoveIt! is currently an alpha release.

*Catch the MoveIt! team at ICRA 2013 and ROSCON:
*

   - *ICRA Booth Demo*: The Willow Garage Booth will have a MoveIt! demo as
   part of the exhibit. The booth is open on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
   (May 7-9, 2013).
   - *ICRA Workshop Talk*: Sachin Chitta is giving a talk on "MoveIt!:
   Software for Rapid Development of New Robotics Applications" at the ICRA
   Industrial Mobile Assistance Robots Workshop on Monday, May 6, 2013.
   - *ICRA Tutorial*: MoveIt! will be presented at a tutorial on Friday May
   10, 2013: Motion Planning for Mobile Manipulation: State-of-the-art
   Methods and Tools<http://moveit.ros.org/wiki/index.php/Tutorials/ICRA2013>,
   organized by Sachin Chitta, Ioan Sucan, Mark Moll, Lydia Kavraki and Maxim
   Likhache*v.*
   - *ROSCON Keynote Talk*: Sachin Chitta, Ioan Sucan and Acorn Pooley will
   be at ROSCON presenting MoveIt! at 9:30 AM on Saturday May 10, 2013.

*Acknowledgements*

Willow Garage gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the following
people to MoveIt! and associated packages that MoveIt! uses and depends on:

   - Lydia Kavraki, Mark Moll, and associated members of the Kavraki
Lab<http://www.kavrakilab.org>(Rice University) for developing OMPL -
a suite of randomized planners that
   MoveIt! uses extensively.
   - Dinesh Manocha and Jia Pan of UNC Chapel Hill <http://unc.edu> for
   developing FCL - a package of collision checking algorithm used extensively
   by MoveIt!
   - Maxim Likhachev (CMU <http://www.ri.cmu.edu>), Ben Cohen
(Penn<https://www.grasp.upenn.edu>)
   and Mike Phillips (CMU <http://www.willowgarage.com/>) for developing
   SBPL <http://www.ros.org/wiki/sbpl>, a search-based planning library
   integrated with MoveIt!
   - Armin Hornung, Kai Wurm, Maren Bennewitz, Cyril Stachniss, and Wolfram
   Burgard for developing Octomap <http://www.ros.org/wiki/octomap> -
   software for 3D occupancy mapping used by MoveIt!
   - Mrinal Kalakrishnan, Peter Pastor and Stefan Schaal at
USC<http://robotics.usc.edu>for developing
   STOMP <http://www.ros.org/wiki/Papers/ICRA2011_Kalakrishnan>, the
   distance field components in MoveIt! and the implementation of the
CHOMP<http://www.ros.org/wiki/chomp_motion_planner>algorithm in Arm
Navigation
   - Dave Coleman from the University of Colorado,
Boulder<http://www.colorado.edu>for developing the MoveIt! Setup
Assistant and adding documentation to the
   MoveIt! website.

MoveIt! evolved from the Arm Navigation and Grasping Pipeline components of
ROS and we gratefully acknowledge the seminal contributions of all
developers and researchers to those packages, especially Edward Gil Jones,
Matei Ciocarlie, Kaijen Hsiao, Adam Leeper, and Ken Anderson.

We also acknowledge the contributions of the Willow Garage interns who have
worked on MoveIt!, Arm Navigation and associated components, members of the
ROS and PR2 communities who have used, provided feedback and provided
contributions to MoveIt! and Arm Navigation and members of the ROS
community for developing the infrastructure that MoveIt! builds on.

We also acknowledge the contributions of the ROS-Industrial consortium led
by the Southwest Research Institute for supporting and building up
infrastructure for applying MoveIt! and Arm Navigation to industrial robots
and environments. Similarly, we acknowledge the contributions of Fraunhofer
IPA <http://www.ipa.fraunhofer.de/index.php?L=2> to MoveIt! and support for
the ROS-Industrial effort in Europe.

For more information visit
moveit.ros.org<http://www.willowgarage.com/moveit.ros.org>


-- 
Sachin Chitta
Manager and Research Scientist
Autonomous Mobile Manipulation Group
Willow Garage
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