MoveIt Pro Newsletter August 2025

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.

Behavior Trees have become very popular in robotics, and are core to our extensible and easy-to-use architecture. You are welcome to edit the Behavior Tree XML source files directly, but our drag-and-drop user interface now provides a wide variety of debugging tools, including the ability to:

• Disable parts of your Behavior Tree for testing
• Highlight failing nodes
• View at runtime the Behavior Tree Blackboard

Also, one of our customers, Charles River Analytics, will share their experience with MoveIt Pro during a webinar on September 10th.

In this update

• Case Study: Space Force
• New Features in MoveIt Pro
  • Enhanced Tool Changing
  • Camera Calibration Procedure
  • Track a Pose While Avoiding Obstacles
  • Quick Add Behavior Workflow
  • Comment and Uncomment Individual Nodes
  • View All Behavior Tree Ports

Case Study

PickNik Demonstrates Autonomous Resident Space Object Capture in Microgravity Testbed for United States Space Force

PickNik used an air-bearing table, a Motiv Space Systems arm, and MoveIt Pro in a microgravity-analog test. The system went from simulation to real-world validation in just five days, showcasing MoveIt Pro’s ability to rapidly de-risk high-stakes space operations. See the full video

New Features in MoveIt Pro

Enhanced Tool Changing

MoveIt Pro supports automatic tool changing, enabling your robot to seamlessly switch between end effectors during operation. This unlocks complex multi-step tasks—like picking, welding, and inspection—without manual intervention, boosting flexibility and automation potential.

Camera Calibration Procedure

New how-to guide and capabilities to streamline accurate camera pose calibration - letting you compute and save both the Calibrated Optical Pose and Camera Mounting Pose using April-tag references at multiple waypoints. It delivers repeatable, automated calibration, eliminating manual measurements.

Track a Pose While Avoiding Obstacles

The new MPCPointCloudClearance Behavior tracks a pose in real-time while avoiding a point cloud using model predictive control (MPC). An example Objective is now available in lab_sim.

Quick Add Behavior Workflow

Quickly add new Behaviors to your Behavior Tree by dragging from the sidebar and connecting to parent nodes in a single step. This streamlined workflow reduces clicks and accelerates Objective development.

Comment and Uncomment Individual Nodes

You can now skip individual Behaviors directly within the Behavior Tree editor. This enhancement streamlines Objective testing and debugging by allowing you to toggle Behaviors without deleting or making copies of your Behavior Tree.

View All Behavior Tree Ports

By default, MoveIt Pro hides data ports beyond the top 5, in order to keep the tree compact and more viewable. However, there are use cases where you might want to expand all ports on each Behavior – this is now possible!

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MoveIt Pro is PickNik Robotics’ commercial robotics software platform that extends the capabilities of the open-source MoveIt project. Designed for unstructured environments, MoveIt Pro provides powerful tools for motion planning, grasping, perception, and behavior sequencing. With pre-built robot behaviors and a modular runtime architecture, MoveIt Pro significantly reduces engineering effort and time-to-deployment. Its hardware-agnostic design supports a wide range of commercial and custom robotic arms, making it ideal for scalable automation across space, manufacturing, and logistics sectors.