One of the most popular languages, Python, is extensively used by emerging tech developers as well as robotics researchers. In robotics, the language has become a key part of the robot operating system (ROS) and is used for designing the embedded systems. For instance, the embedded systems and exhaustive automation packages of Raspberry Pi and Arduino are designed using this language.
In this article, we list down the top 10 Python libraries for Robotics.
(The libraries are listed according to their GitHub Stars)
1| Robot Framework
About: Robot Framework is a generic open-source automation framework for acceptance testing, acceptance test-driven development (ATDD), and robotic process automation (RPA). The core framework is implemented using Python – it supports both Python 2 and Python 3 – and runs also on Jython (JVM), IronPython (.NET) and PyPy. Robot Framework is open and extensible and can be integrated with virtually any other tool to create powerful and flexible automation solutions.
Know more here.
2| Pyro
About: Python Remote Objects – or Pyro – is a library that enables you to build applications in which objects can talk to each other over the network, with minimal programming effort. Written in Python, this toolbox works between different system architectures and operating systems. It provides a set of powerful features that enables you to build distributed applications rapidly and effortlessly.
Know more here.
3| DART
About: Dynamic Animation and Robotics Toolkit – or DART – is a collaborative, cross-platform, open-source library that provides data structures and algorithms for kinematic and dynamic applications in robotics and computer animation. The library is distinguished by its accuracy and stability due to its use of generalised coordinates to represent articulated rigid body systems and Featherstone’s Articulated Body Algorithm to compute the dynamics of motion.
DART also provides efficient computation of Jacobian matrices for arbitrary body points and coordinate frames. The library was created by the Graphics Lab and Humanoid Robotics Lab at Georgia Institute of Technology with ongoing contributions from the Personal Robotics Lab at the University of Washington and Open Source Robotics Foundation.
Know more here.
4| PyRobot
About: PyRobot is a Python library for benchmarking and running experiments in robot learning. It is a combination of two popular Python libraries, i.e. Requests and BeautifulSoup. It can be used to drive applications that don’t provide an API or any way of hooking into them programmatically. This library will allow you to run robots without having to deal with the robot specific software along with enabling better comparisons.
Know more here
5| PyDy
About: Python Dynamics or PyDy is a tool kit written in the Python programming language that utilises an array of scientific programs to enable the study of multibody dynamics. The toolkit helps a user to perform visualisation, model specification, simulation, benchmarking, among others in their workflows.
Know more here.
6| Simulation Open Framework Architecture
About: Simulation Open Framework Architecture or SOFA is an open-source library and an efficient framework dedicated to research, prototyping and development of physics-based simulations. The library primarily focuses on real-time simulation, with an emphasis on medical simulation.
The advanced software architecture of this framework allows the creation of complex and evolving simulations by combining new algorithms with existing algorithms, synthesis of complex models from simpler ones using a scene-graph description, among others.
Know more here.
7| Klamp’t
About: Kris’ Locomotion and Manipulation Planning Toolbox or Klamp’t is an open-source, cross-platform software package for robot modelling, simulating, planning, optimisation, and visualisation. The library aims to provide an accessible, wide range of programming tools for learning robotics, analysing robots, developing algorithms, and prototyping intelligent behaviours.
Some of the features of this tool are-
- Simulation of various sensors including RGB+D cameras, laser sensors, gyroscopes, force/torque sensors, and accelerometers
- Many sampling-based motion planners implemented
- Supports legged and fixed-based robots
- Contact mechanics computations: force closure, support polygons, the stability of rigid bodies and actuated robots
Know more here.
8| Pybotics
About: Pybotics is an open-source Python toolbox for robot kinematics and calibration. The toolbox was mainly designed to provide a simple, clear, and concise interface to quickly simulate and evaluate common robot concepts, such as kinematics, dynamics, trajectory generations, and calibration.
Know more here.
9| Siconos
About: Currently distributed under Apache Licenses, Siconos is an open-source scientific software primarily targeted at modelling and simulating nonsmooth dynamical systems. Written in C++ and Python, this software package can be used for modelling and simulation of dynamic systems.
Know more here.
10| iDynTree
About: iDynTree is a library of robot dynamics algorithms for control, estimation and simulation. The library is written in C++ language and supports several other languages including Python, MATLAB, among others. To use the library in Python language, you need to add the PYTHONPATH environment variable to the install path of the iDynTree.py file.
To install, type
export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:<prefix>/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/
Know more here.
