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People

MoveIt is an open source project that is the result of the combined efforts of a large international community and multiple organizations. Many people have played a key role in making MoveIt what it is today and they are acknowledged below - thank you!

The primary governance of MoveIt takes place during the public monthly maintainer meetings through majority vote. The meetings are also now known as the ROS 2 Manipulation Working Group. For more information see the full maintainer policy as well as the CODEOWNERS file.

Organizational leadership, outreach, publicity, and additional maintenance is led by PickNik Robotics.

Current Maintainers

We have a stringent process for giving commit access to the code base to ensure quality. MoveIt maintainers, commonly referred to as “committers” in other open source projects, are the seasoned experts of the MoveIt project and the only ones who can merge pull requests.
Abishalini Sivaraman
PickNik Robotics
Abishalini
Andy Zelenak
PickNik Robotics
AndyZe
Dave Coleman
PickNik Robotics
davetcoleman
Gijs van der Hoorn
Delft Univ. of Tech / ROS-I
gavanderhoorn
Henning Kayser
PickNik Robotics
henningkayser
Jafar Abdi
PickNik Robotics
JafarAbdi
Joachim Schleicher
Pilz
jschleicher
Jorge Nicho
SwRI / ROS-I
jrgnicho
Mark Moll
PickNik Robotics
mamoll
Marq Rasmussen
PickNik Robotics
MarqRazz
Michael Ferguson
Independent Consultant
mikeferguson
Michael Görner
University of Hamburg
v4hn
Robert Haschke
CITEC, Bielefeld University
rhaschke
Sebastian Castro
PickNik Robotics
sea-bass
Sebastian Jahr
PickNik Robotics
sjahr
Simon Schmeißer
Optonic
simonschmeisser
Tyler Weaver
PickNik Robotics
tylerjw
Vatan Aksoy Tezer
PickNik Robotics
vatanaksoytezer

Inactive Maintainers

Past maintainers whose great work made this project what it is today:

Sachin Chitta
sachinchitta
Ioan Sucan
isucan
Dave Hershburger
hersh
Acorn Pooley
N/A
Bryce Willey
BryceStevenWilley
Jon Binney
jonbinney
Bence Magyar
Heriot-Watt University
bmagyar
Ian McMahon
Toyota Research Institute
IanTheEngineer
Isaac IY Saito
Plus One Robotics
130s
Felix von Drigalski
felixvd
Lior Lustgarten
Microsoft Edge Robotics
lilustga
Mike Lautman
PickNik Robotics
mlautman

Current Core Contributors

We want to have as many people as possible in our community involved in reviewing pull requests and responding to issues. We have a non-commit access category (Github Triage) of MoveIt experts we call "Core Contributors" - these participants are recognized for their hard work and contributions to MoveIt early on.
Chris Thrasher
PickNik Robotics
ChrisThrasher
Christian Henkel
Pilz
ct2034
David V. Lu!!
Metro Robots
DLu
Kei Okada
JSK Lab, Univ of Tokyo
k-okada
Mario Prats
PickNik Robotics
marioprats
Martin Günther
DFKI
mintar
Nathan Brooks
PickNik Robotics
nbbrooks
Paul Gesel
PickNik Robotics
pac48
Peter David Fagan
University of Edinburgh
peterdavidfagan
Stephanie Eng
PickNik Robotics
stephanie-eng
V Mohammed Ibrahim
ibrahiminfinite
Yan Yu
Intel
RoboticsYY

Inactive Core Contributors

Past core contributors who've helped the project in various ways:

Anas Mchichou
anasarrak
Levi Armstrong
SwRI / ROS-I
Levi-Armstrong
Mohmad El khzragy
TUM
N/A
Shingo Kitagawa
knorth55
Víctor Mayoral
vmayoral
William Baker
Houston Mechatronics
willcbaker
Zak Kingston
Rice University
zkingston

Sponsors

PickNik PickNik was founded with the mission of growing the MoveIt project through community building and contract consulting. Learn More
ROSi The port to ROS 2 is supported by ROSIN - ROS-Industrial Quality-Assured Robot Software Components. More information: Learn More

Early History and Acknowledgements

MoveIt's first commit was October 2011. MoveIt was initially developed at Willow Garage by Sachin Chitta, Ioan Sucan, Gil E. Jones, Acorn Pooley, Suat Gedikli, and Dave Hershberger and we thank Willow Garage for its support of the MoveIt project. We would also like to thank SRI International for its support of the MoveIt project between October 2013 and June 2015. Since then, PickNik has been leading the support of the MoveIt project.

We gratefully acknowledge the early contributions of the following people to MoveIt and associated packages that MoveIt uses:

  • Lydia Kavraki, Mark Moll, and associated members of the Kavraki Lab (Rice University) for developing OMPL - a suite of randomized planners that MoveIt uses extensively.
  • Dinesh Manocha and Jia Pan of UNC Chapel Hill for developing FCL - a package of collision checking algorithm used extensively by MoveIt
  • Maxim Likhachev (CMU), Ben Cohen (Penn) and Mike Phillips (CMU) for developing SBPL, a search-based planning library integrated with MoveIt
  • Armin Hornung, Kai Wurm, Maren Bennewitz, Cyril Stachniss, and Wolfram Burgard for developing Octomap - software for 3D occupancy mapping used by MoveIt
  • Mrinal Kalakrishnan, Peter Pastor and Stefan Schaal at USC for developing STOMP and CHOMP
  • Dave Coleman for developing the MoveIt Setup Assistant, OMPL algorithms, and taking leadership of the MoveIt project since 2016.
  • Michael Ferguson for the simple controller manager plugin, inspiring World MoveIt Day, and helping revamp the MoveIt project in 2016.
  • Edward Gil Jones, Matei Ciocarlie, Kaijen Hsiao, Adam Leeper, and Ken Anderson for their seminal contributions of Arm Navigation and Grasping Pipeline components that MoveIt evolved from.
  • Contributions of Willow Garage interns who have worked on MoveIt, Arm Navigation, and associated components
  • Members of the ROS and PR2 communities who have used, provided feedback and provided contributions to MoveIt
  • ROS-Industrial consortium led by the Southwest Research Institute and Fraunhofer IPA for applying MoveIt to industrial robots.
  • Open Robotics for playing an advisory role, maintaining ROS, and providing the infrastructure for releasing packages

Citing MoveIt

See the citations page for details.