Motion planning · Control & Planning
Drake v1.40·
Drake is an ambitious open-source toolbox for modeling, simulation, motion planning, and control of advanced robotics, developed since 2013 at MIT by Prof. Russ Tedrake (author of the textbook "Underactuated Robotics"). Since 2017, the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) has taken over as the principal sponsor and developer — TRI employs dozens of engineers working on Drake. BSD-3-Clause license.
Drake offers a unique combination: (1) a high-precision simulation engine with inelastic contacts solved using complementarity methods (LCP), (2) a system framework based on block-diagrams (each element = a system with input/output ports), (3) optimizers: SNOPT, IPOPT, MOSEK, Gurobi, Clarabel, scs (commercial ones require licenses), (4) symbolic automatic differentiation, (5) built-in Spot, ALLEGRO Hand, IIWA, PR2, Cassie, Atlas, Punyo models.
Main applications: planning contact-rich manipulation tasks with contact constraints (Trajectory Optimization), task-and-motion planning, model-based reinforcement learning, formal verification of systems (Lyapunov, sum-of-squares programming). Drake is used among others in Punyo (TRI soft humanoid), Spot manipulation (Boston Dynamics — experiments), and in DARPA programs (TerrAware, RACER).
Simulation software is used for modelling, testing, and validating robot behaviours, sensor characteristics, environments, and algorithms without requiring physical hardware. It enables safe, repeatable, and cost-effective development cycles. Common robotics simulators include Gazebo, Isaac Sim (NVIDIA), MuJoCo, PyBullet, and Webots, each offering different trade-offs between physics accuracy, rendering fidelity, and integration with middleware frameworks such as ROS 2.
An API Library is a software package that exposes programmatic interfaces for communicating with a device, service, or system. In robotics it typically forms a lightweight integration layer built on top of the manufacturer's official API or an open-source project, abstracting low-level protocol details and providing language-native bindings (Python, C++, Java, etc.).
A family of open-source libraries for motion planning (RRT, PRM, Lazy-PRM), inverse kinematics, rigid-body dynamics, and trajectory optimization: MoveIt, OMPL, Pinocchio, Drake, RBDL, TrajOpt, KDL, Bullet, iDynTree.
TRI Punyo soft humanoid, MIT mini-cheetah / Cheetah 3, Anymal-D research, DARPA Robotics Challenge Atlas finalists, Boston Dynamics Spot manipulation experiments, Underactuated Robotics MIT 6.832 course (200+ students yearly), > 300 ICRA / IROS / RSS / CoRL publications.
github.com/RobotLocomotion/drake ~3.6k★, drake.mit.edu with full Doxygen documentation + Python tutorials, Slack channel > 1.2k members, regular nightly builds, > 250 PRs/month mostly from TRI.
Boston Dynamics bipedal humanoid robot. The fully electric generation unveiled in 2024 succeeds the hydraulic Atlas that was retired after more than a decade of research.
Tutor Intelligence industrial robot designed for palletizing, depalletizing and case-picking in warehouses and factories, offered as Robotics-as-a-Service from $14/hr.
Bipedal humanoid robot by Unitree Robotics, designed as a compact research, development, and developer platform.
Unitree H1 is a full-size general-purpose humanoid robot (~180 cm, ~47 kg). Bipedal, 5 DOF per leg + 4 DOF per arm, 3.3 m/s walking speed, 360° perception via 3D LiDAR + depth camera, Unitree M107 PMSM joint motors with ~360 N·m peak knee torque. Standard compute: Intel Core i5/i7; optional NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX.
Ubuntu 22.04 / macOS 13+ recommended. Python 3.10+. Bazel as the build system.
License family: Permissive
Update — Clarabel solver, better pinocchio interop.
MJCF import, better contact dynamics.
Major release: stable system API, new models.
API stabilization, complete Python bindings.
Full C++ rewrite — start of TRI support.
First Drake version in MATLAB — at MIT 6.832.
