We’re excited to announce release MoveIt Pro 6 that further enhances the development platform for ROS 2 applications for robot arms on fixed bases, linear rails, and mobile manipulators.
Key New features:
New High Fidelity Physics Simulation Engine
Simulate RGBD cameras, 2D and 3D LiDAR, and most importantly force-torque sensors! The simulator enables a variety of end effectors, including robust 2 finger grippers, vacuum and magnetic grippers, and tools that form rigid attachments, for example welding and nailing. Of particular note, MoveIt Pro’s simulator does not require a dedicated GPU (making it easy to use on any laptop or cloud compute). MoveIt Pro now uses this simulator by default instead of Gazebo.
New Motion Planning with MoveIt Pro RRTConnect
Meet our new joint-space planner, Pro RRTConnect. This planner is deterministic, faster to compute, and generates more efficient paths compared to OMPL planners. Its first release supports both free space and Cartesian path planning, and like all MoveIt planners, is hardware agnostic and collision aware.
Force Compliant Controllers
We have added two real-time controllers for force sensitive tasks: a Joint Trajectory Admittance Controller (JTAC) and a Velocity Force Controller (VFC). The JTAC is great for use cases where object localization is not 100% perfect or when interacting with heavy objects, such as grasping motions and opening doors. The VFC is great for use cases where a particular force needs to be exerted over a trajectory, such as sanding and cutting motions.
Whole Body Control for Mobile Manipulators
Mobile manipulators present a great opportunity to both free manipulators from fixed bases and to improve their reachability. If you have a robot arm on a base which has too many constraints, too few degrees of freedom (DOF), or not enough reachability to perform a task, whole body planning will enable the base to move in coordination with the arm to resolve redundancy and increase reachability.
Navigation Support
Control your AMR or AGV with two new MoveIt Pro Behaviors: NavigateToPoseAction and NavigateThroughPosesAction. These send the robot base to one or more poses using Nav2’s Behavior Trees.
Arm-Centric Visualization Improvements
We’ve added more intuitive 3D grid visualization, streamlined objective lists, and more intelligent error messaging. This makes it easier to identify points of failure in MoveIt motion planning and manipulation.
PLC Interaction with an IO Controller
We have added an Input/Output Controller that enables triggering ROS-enabled binary IO devices, such as activating vacuum grippers or communicating with PLCs, via behaviors.
Built on Open Source
MoveIt Pro fully embraces the ROS 2 ecosystem, including its build system, package management, message format, middleware, etc. MoveIt Pro is also built on MoveIt open source, following the common open core business model, providing commercial grade, premium real time controllers, planners, IK solvers, etc. We continue to maintain MoveIt open source and contribute to other key libraries including core ROS 2, ROS 2 Control, RobotWebTools, and more.
