The Franka Research 3 robotic arm offers low-level access to its control and learning capabilities. | Source: PickNik Robotics
PickNik Inc. yesterday announced expanded support for the Franka Research 3 , or FR3, robot arm in its flagship MoveIt Pro software. The expanded support will enable researchers to accelerate AI robotics development through high-fidelity simulation, training data collection, and hardware-ready policy deployment, said the company.
“AI research in robotics depends on safe, reliable ways to collect data and validate algorithms,” said Dave Coleman, Ph.D., founder and chief product officer at PickNik Robotics. “With MoveIt Pro and Franka Research 3, teams can focus on innovation instead of integration.”
Franka and PickNik partnership dates back to 2018
PickNik and Franka Robotics GmbH have partnered since 2018 to provide tools for robotic manipulation. Research institutions around the world use Franka’s robot arms, which it said are recognized for their sensitivity, precision, and reliability. The companies said the latest collaboration highlights their shared commitment to advancing AI for robotic manipulation.
Founded in 2015 for the Amazon Picking Challenge, PickNik Robotics has developed software to help organizations improve precision and efficiency in industries ranging from aerospace and construction to logistics. The Boulder, Colo.-based company is also active in the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS) community.
Franka Robotics is a German, research-driven robotics company headquartered in Munich and operating globally. Founded in 2016, it has been part of Agile Robots SE since 2023. It creates reference robotics platforms to enable researchers to focus on driving advancements in AI and robotics.
PickNik hopes to target bottlenecks in AI robotics
The new MoveIt Pro integration for FR3 includes:
- Complete robot models (URDF/SRDF) for single- and dual-arm setups.
- High-fidelity digital twin environments to collect training data and test policies.
- Tutorials for collecting datasets and training diffusion policies.
- A detailed hardware setup guide to move seamlessly from simulation to real systems.
PickNik said this collaboration addresses one of the central bottlenecks in AI robotics: the gap between research and deployment. By combining FR3’s hardware capabilities with MoveIt Pro’s advanced planning and simulation tools, researchers and decision-makers can more effectively advance manipulation AI while reducing cost and risk.
In January, PickNik released MoveIt Pro 7.0, the latest version of its platform for developing robotic arm applications. With this release, the company said it made significant strides in its three core pillars: rapid development, hardware-agnostic design, and intelligent runtime decisions.
PickNik said it was able to speed up planning on the MoveIt platform by optimizing several core planning tools. It said PlanCartesianPath and ValidateTrajectory now have faster default settings.
In addition, MoveIt Pro 7 includes expanded pro-RRT support. Pro-RRT now supports robots with continuous joints, enabling motion along the shortest path to target angles.
PickNik also equipped MoveIt Pro 7 with smarter behaviors for dynamic applications. It has added behaviors such as GetTrajectoryStateAtTime and GeneratePointToPointTrajectory to make runtime adjustments more precise and reliable.
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