Our "Phase 0" feasibility program is the common starting point for customers with open-ended robotics program requirements, and allows PickNik to perform a thorough technical analysis, architecture review, and risk assessment for your initiative. See our dedicated page on this topic.
Common reasons include:
In general Solution Studies are not required, but strongly recommended. An engagement with PickNik that does not involve Solution Studies typically results in just T&M contracts with general consulting hours.
Absolutely, we've had a lot of customers use our technical roadmaps and feasibility reports to raise VC money. We usually create a "concept video" recording using the Digital Twin sim, and that can definitely be used to give both VCs and potential customers the vision of the full system, and paint the concept in their imagination.
We always have to create some level of simulation in MoveIt Pro, in order to use the software’s capabilities. However the fidelity and complexity of that simulation can vary based on needs and budget. We always assist our customers in setting up their initial robot configuration with MoveIt Pro, which does result in a basic digital twin being created.
Absolutely, we will be able to understand the kinematic reachability, sensor placement, and other design requirements before buying, shipping, and installing hardware.
For sure - we believe high fidelity concept videos are key to effectively communicating to various types of stakeholders, which is why we always recommend a Digital Twin be created.
MoveIt Pro is a commercial-grade platform for accelerating the development of unstructured robotic arm applications, reducing engineering time by up to 75%.
Its reusable reference applications, manipulation runtime engine, optional drag-and-drop user interface, and seamless integration with other robotics components enable rapid, customizable robotic solutions for all industries. Check out the Product Tour online!
You can leverage our control platform that we've been developing for nearly a decade, and have used with many customers. This will save you time and money, as well as providing more advanced features than nearly all robot arm manufacturers provide out of box.
MoveIt Pro is our professional grade runtime and developer platform for robotics solutions, which includes two key components:
While traditional pendant programs offer a simple and easy interface to programming some types of highly structured applications in factories, MoveIt Pro enables you to go beyond by providing far more advanced capabilities. MoveIt Pro is a comprehensive development environment that enables you to create, simulate, test, and deploy complex robot applications with features like collision checking, multi-step motion generation, task planning, and native ROS compatibility. This empowers robotics engineers to develop sophisticated behaviors, automate tasks, iterate rapidly, and create custom extensions, ultimately unlocking the full potential of your robot arm beyond what a pendant program can offer.
MoveIt Pro is a single platform of tools designed to enable many types of robotics applications. With its robust library of motion primitives (move, grasp, push, rotate, etc.), advanced perception software, and unparalleled motion planners, developers have all of the building blocks needed to create cutting-edge automation solutions. By comparison, most robotics software tools are created to solve a single, narrow activity.
With MoveIt Pro, you can automate your entire facility using a single platform rather than integrating a myriad of specialized solutions from disparate providers.
PickNik has extensive experience, particularly, in the surgical robotics and space industry. We are expanding that experience to any other safety critical robotics industry. We are here to work with your team to ensure your deployed robotics motion planning software is certifiable and verifiable.
We have developed MoveIt Pro as the commercial-grade developer platform and runtime to power enterprise robotics applications. We also offer a set of core libraries ideal for safety certification, that does not require ROS, Behavior Trees, or other higher level functionality. To learn more, checkout PickNik Safety Certifiable Modules.
MoveIt Pro extends the capabilities of traditional debugging methods with specialized tools designed for the complexities of robotic systems. Its proactive warnings, live previews, immediate feedback messages, introspection behaviors, easy to read configuration details, and intuitive BT representation collectively provide a powerful suite of debugging features. These enhancements help developers diagnose and resolve issues more quickly and effectively, ultimately leading to more reliable and robust robotic applications.
Robotic trailblazers have found MoveIt Pro to be a great prototyping tool for quickly validating their hardware designs, using the software platform for:
PickNik seeks to accelerate robotics adoption, particularly in unstructured environments, by providing a re-usable, modular, and general purpose platform for robotics. Our goal is to deliver the MoveIt Pro platform to our customers to enable rapid development of commercial grade applications while also enabling you to own, develop, and maintain your intellectual property.
Absolutely, MoveIt Pro provides dedicated support from a knowledgeable team that can assist with any issues you encounter during development. In-person training courses and online documentation are available to help you master MoveIt Pro's capabilities.
We support Ubuntu natively, Mac through Parallels, and Windows through VMWare. See our tech spec for more information.
MoveIt Pro is robot arm agnostic, allowing you to develop applications that can be transferred between various models or brands of robot arms using the URDF standard. This flexibility enables you to iterate on performance needs and potentially lower costs by switching between robots.
MoveIt Pro requires a ROS 2 driver to communicate with your hardware and sensors. The Robot Operating System (ROS) has become an industry standard for interoperability, and many drivers already exist as first party or third party implementations. PickNik also works with companies to develop new ROS Drivers as needed.
The main need is a ROS 2 driver for those mobile robots and sensors, which most vendors now provide. PickNik, or your team, can of course develop any missing ROS 2 drivers. From there, there is some basic onboarding of that hardware to MoveIt Pro, which typically takes a few days. We are happy to do this for your team, or we can train your team to do it using our online documentation.
Not directly, MoveIt Pro is specifically designed from the ground up to work with the commercial-grade ROS 2 (Robot Operating System 2). It takes full advantage of the capabilities offered by ROS 2 to provide a seamless and powerful development environment for creating and deploying robot arm applications. If you're using ROS 2, MoveIt Pro offers a comprehensive set of tools and features to enhance your robotics development process. However, if you have a ROS 1 <---> ROS 2 bridge for a specific ROS 1 node, it can be launched and leveraged in your Pro application. Talk to the PickNik team about enabling ROS 1 support, for an additional fee, if it is critical to your application.
There are many reasons including:
For more details see our ROS 2 Driver Development page.
ROS 2 Humble is our default version. More recent versions of ROS 2 can also be supported if needed, we’re happy to discuss that. See our Technical Spec for full details.
Yes, we support both x86 and ARM-based platforms like the Jetson. We have various customers using Jetsons, specifically the Orin series of modules, as they deliver the most GPU power. However, for less demanding applications, use of a less powerful module like a Jetson Xavier may be possible.
Out-of-the-box, MoveIt Pro’s Object Segmentation 2D Objective completes 2D image segmentation using the Mask R-CNN segmentation model from Detectron2.
Yes! The most common way this is done is by exposing your ML capability via a ROS Python action server, and then writing a short custom behavior wrapping interaction with the action server.
Yes! For example, MoveIt Pro can save point clouds with perspective from multiple angles and after adjusting the object's orientation with a gripper. This data can be readily processed by tools like COCOAnnotatorNG, and then used to train your ML model.
A few of the applications in MoveIt Pro include Scan, Pick & Place; Bin Picking; Mobile Manipulation, and Teleoperation. Check out the Product Tour and Technical Specs for a more complete list.
Despite the lack of support of closed loop chains in the URDF specification, we provide basic closed-loop chain support through usage of mimic joints.
Multiple arms, parallel manipulators, and mobile-manipulator systems are best controlled using a single planning group for robust motion planning and collision avoidance. Multiple planning groups can be used to generate motion plans for sub-assemblies in the system (such as one or two arms of a multi-arm system, or just the manipulator of a mobile-manipulator system). Selecting the appropriate planning group allows for collision-free motion plans of one or more sub-assemblies as well as the entire system.
Execution of Cartesian-space paths via base and arm coordination is possible, including adding constraints on the way the base moves. More complex motion planning around obstacles is experimental.
MoveIt Pro enables developers to switch between multiple types of simulators as well as real hardware, to test different aspects of the system. MoveIt Pro supports the following simulator sources out of the box:
Custom or commercial simulators, such as NVIDIA Isaac Sim and Gazebo, can be integrated by connecting them to the relevant ROS topics, services, and actions.
Behavior trees are a hierarchical structure commonly used in robotics and AI to define and control the behavior of autonomous systems, such as robot arms. They offer a visual representation of decisions and fallbacks that a system can take in response to different conditions or stimuli. MoveIt Pro's integrated behavior tree editor combines model-based design with motion and task planning, enabling the creation of sophisticated robotic behaviors.
If you wish to extend or build on top of existing MoveIt Pro capabilities, we have made it easy to create custom behavior plugins, which are designed with ROS development best practices in mind. We provide one-click buttons for creating custom C++ behaviors that are ROS-less and ROS-full (with full access to the MoveIt planning scene)!
You can also use these custom C++ behaviors to talk to any other ROS node on your system, regardless of which language it was written in. This interoperability empowers you to build upon your current codebase and seamlessly integrate it into MoveIt Pro's streamlined development process.
We do not offer free trials, due to the complexity of robotics and hardware integration. We have learned from our customers that MoveIt Pro is best experienced with the training and onboarding assistance of PickNik. Because this takes critical resources from our team, we are unable to offer free trials.
MoveIt Pro is currently being developed (and priced) for commercial-grade robotics applications and we do not currently offer a researcher or student version.
In short, a developer license is for simulation only, and a runtime is for running on hardware. For more information see our pricing page.
Yes, a runtime license is required for every physical robot you want to install on. A developer license is just for use in simulations and digital twins. For more information see our pricing page.
We offer either option, to best fit your business model and your end customer’s needs. For example, if you are offering a RaaS robotics product you would probably prefer our annual license. For more information see our pricing page.
If you choose not to renew your annual license subscription, the software will stop functioning. However, we do offer perpetual licenses (for additional costs) which never turn off, for both the Developer Platform and the Runtime licenses.
Yes, your license will be active through the exact date of the following year.
Out of the box, MoveIt Pro licenses require an internet connection for online activation and regular use. We do offer a special version of MoveIt Pro, available by request, that supports limited internet connectivity with an offline license. See our How To Guide.
Yes, this is part of our Enterprise Runtime option. For more information, contact sales.
A MoveIt Pro Developer license is sold site-wide, which means you can install it on an unlimited number of developer computers at your company. That said, you do need to request each license individually from PickNik, although we do associate each one with a unique email address that you provide. You can also uninstall MoveIt Pro from one device and move the license to a different device.
It is discouraged to do this unless the robot has been permanently retired/removed from your fleet. The intention of a runtime license is not to be floating, but you can contact support if special exceptions need to be made.
Yes, the MoveIt Pro Developer Platform provides the graphical user interface necessary to run, debug,a introspect your robot hardware, so it is required to be active together with licenses of the MoveIt Pro Runtime.
Probably not. If your robot is isolated and not on any network, it is unlikely to be exploited unless someone gains physical access to your robot on premise.
The MoveIt Motion Planning Framework is popular open source software in the ROS community that provides a low-level foundation for robot motion planning and manipulation. MoveIt Pro, on the other hand, takes this capability to the next level by offering a fully integrated development environment and user interface. With MoveIt Pro, you gain access to a range of additional, advanced features such as a user-friendly behavior tree editor, integrated ML perception and grasping capabilities, automatic ROS node and arm fault recovery mechanisms, seamless simulation and hardware switching, and a dedicated support team. In addition, MoveIt Pro is fully backed by a dedicated team of developers and support engineers at PickNik, providing you the warranties and guarantees you need to build critical applications.
See this explanation of the differences between MoveIt OSS and MoveIt
In short, it will help you increase sales, in particular in the US and European markets.
Yes, PickNik can certainly provide development services and consulting to assist in becoming Certified Compatible.
