PickNik expands support for Franka Research 3 robot on MoveIt Pro - The Robot Report

PickNik Robotics has announced expanded support for the Franka Research 3 (FR3) robotic arm in its MoveIt Pro software platform, aiming to accelerate AI robotics development through enhanced simulation, training data collection, and hardware-ready policy deployment. The FR3 is a force-sensitive robot known for its precision and low-level control access, widely used in research institutions. This collaboration, ongoing since 2018, combines Franka’s hardware capabilities with MoveIt Pro’s advanced planning and simulation tools to bridge the gap between AI robotics research and real-world deployment, reducing costs and risks for researchers. The new MoveIt Pro integration for the FR3 includes comprehensive robot models for single- and dual-arm setups, high-fidelity digital twin environments, tutorials for dataset collection and diffusion policy training, and detailed hardware setup guides to facilitate smooth transitions from simulation to physical systems. Additionally, PickNik released MoveIt Pro 7.0 in early 2025, featuring faster planning algorithms, expanded pro-RRT support for robots