PickNik Robotics Software R&D

MoveIt Pro Newsletter March 2026

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

We’re excited to announce our first major release in nearly a year: MoveIt Pro 9.0! We’ve been hard at work rethinking the developer experience: through the UI, through your favorite IDE, and with new LLM approaches. We have also fully removed our remaining dependencies on MoveIt 2 open source, fully switching over to faster, safer, and more optimal implementations which you can read more about here. We continue to deliver the infrastructure that enables robotics companies to move fast in the Physical AI era.

Octomap vs. NVBlox: Smarter 3D Planning in the Real World

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Good motion planning is what makes a robot feel reliable. When the environment changes, when a depth sensor sees noise, or when the robot works in a tight space, the planning stack decides whether the system reacts with confidence or with guesswork. At PickNik, we’ve supported teams building robots for space, labs, and factory floors. Along the way we’ve used many 3D mapping tools, including our Octomap-based approach in MoveIt Pro and NVIDIA’s NVBlox + CuMotion stack.

MoveIt Pro Newsletter January 2026

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Happy New Year! We just got back from CES, and robots were everywhere. It really felt like a turning point. Jensen (NVIDIA), Cristiano Amon (Qualcomm), and Lisa Su (AMD) were all talking about robotics, AI training, and how performance is finally catching up to what robotics actually needs. It was exciting to see these conversations happening so openly and at this scale, especially when just a few years ago robots felt like a side topic at CES. As someone who’s been building in this space with MoveIt for a long time, it was energizing to see how much momentum there is right now.

MoveIt Pro Newsletter November 2025

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We’re excited to announce a new and easier way to build Behavior Trees in MoveIt Pro using an experimental LLM integration. As of version 8.8 there is a built-in text prompt directly in the UI, that instantly generates complete Behavior Trees and refactors existing ones. This dramatically accelerates the creation of Objectives, reducing setup time and making it easier to prototype, maintain, and deploy complex robotic workflows.

PickNik and Blackswan Space Partner to Advance In-Orbit Autonomy and Space Robotics Simulation

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Hands-On Workshop with ROS™ 2 and MoveIt Pro at ROSCon 2025

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

📅 Monday, October 27, 2025
🕗 8:15 AM
📍 ROSCon 2025, Singapore

MoveIt Pro Newsletter September 2025

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We’re excited that a high quality, updated ROS 2 driver is available for various FANUC and Kawasaki models. Having major industrial manipulator OEMs that supports high bandwidth streaming control via ROS Control is a big win for the robotics community and users of MoveIt Pro. FANUC also now has “Gold” level support with MoveIt Pro. Check out their drivers on our Hardware Ecosystem Page. PickNik is always happy to help support users of ROS 2 drivers.

MoveIt Pro Newsletter August 2025

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Beyond the extensive real-time control algorithms, ML capabilities, and other runtime features, MoveIt Pro includes a powerful development environment to make your work easier and faster.

UX For Robotics Developers: Orchestrating AI with Behavior Trees

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dave Coleman, Chief Product Officer, spoke at Northwest Robotics Alliance in June, 2025. If you missed it, catch the recording!

The World's Commercial Space-Rated Robot Arms: A Space Community Resource

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

At PickNik, we’re building a shared database of commercially available space-rated robotic arms—part of our ongoing commitment to the space robotics community. We created this resource to help teams understand what’s already flying (or in development) as they evaluate architectures, suppliers, and trade-offs for future missions.