MoveIt

MoveIt takes a goal such as “put the gripper here, facing this way” and figures out a collision-free sequence of joint movements to get there. It bundles inverse kinematics solvers, collision checking against a 3D model of the robot and its surroundings, trajectory smoothing, and interfaces to the controllers that actually drive the motors.

The project started at Willow Garage as part of the original Robot Operating System effort and has been maintained since by PickNik Robotics. A university lab building a coffee-fetching arm and a factory integrator programming a bin-picking cell can both start from the same MoveIt code rather than writing a planner from scratch.

There are two generations in active use, MoveIt 1 for ROS 1 and MoveIt 2 for ROS 2, plus a paid commercial layer called MoveIt Pro that adds a runtime, behavior-tree tooling and support.