Open-source alternatives to Rbdl

OpenPi is a vision-language-action robot control framework designed to generate physical control actions for robotic systems. It functions as a distributed robot model trainer, a model format converter, and a robot action streaming server. The framework provides tools for transforming model checkpoints between different framework formats to ensure interoperability across various development environments. It also includes a server that uses websocket connections to stream model-generated control actions from remote inference servers to physical robot hardware in real-time. The system supports

CARLA is an autonomous driving simulator and research environment designed for developing and validating self-driving software. It functions as an urban traffic simulator that generates realistic vehicle and pedestrian behavior and as a synthetic sensor data generator producing LiDAR, Radar, and camera data. The platform distinguishes itself through its deep integration with robotics frameworks, specifically providing native connectivity to ROS2 nodes for robotic control and data processing. It supports the training of driving models via imitation and reinforcement learning within a controlle

Johnny-Five is a JavaScript robotics framework and microcontroller hardware interface designed for programming robots and IoT devices. It provides a standardized library for managing pins, motors, and displays across various microcontroller platforms, allowing developers to control sensors and actuators using a consistent JavaScript API. The framework is distinguished by its use of a plugin-based hardware abstraction system, which enables communication with diverse hardware platforms and protocols. It supports real-time hardware manipulation and debugging through a read-eval-print loop that a

jetson-inference is a set of libraries and tools for executing optimized deep learning models on embedded GPU hardware. Its primary purpose is to enable real-time computer vision and AI inference at the edge with low latency and high throughput. The project distinguishes itself through high-performance streaming analytics and the ability to execute concurrent AI pipelines on auto-grade silicon. It provides specialized support for multi-sensor stream processing, utilizing zero-copy data transport to load camera frames directly into GPU memory. The codebase covers a broad surface of capabiliti

Fast Robot Optimization and Simulation Toolkit (FROST)

PythonRobotics is a comprehensive collection of modular robotics algorithms and educational simulations designed for autonomous navigation, state estimation, and motion control. The project provides a library of standalone implementations for path planning, localization, mapping, and kinematics, serving as a resource for researchers and students to experiment with foundational and advanced robotic theories. The project distinguishes itself through an algorithm-centric design where each module functions as an isolated script, allowing for independent testing and clear pedagogical demonstration

Apollo is a comprehensive software stack designed for autonomous vehicle development, providing the necessary components for perception, planning, and control. It functions as a high-performance robotics middleware, utilizing a publish-subscribe data bus to facilitate low-latency communication between distributed modules and hardware sensors. The platform integrates data from cameras, lidar, and radar through a sensor fusion framework to generate a real-time environmental model for navigation. The system features a component-based runtime framework that manages task scheduling and resource al

Massively parallel rigidbody physics simulation on accelerator hardware.

Open source C++ physics engine library in 3D

Research-focused C++23 physics engine for robotics, animation, and machine learning, with Python bindings

2 and 3-dimensional rigid body physics engine for Rust.

ROS-based framework and RPi image to control PX4-powered drones 🍀

Openpilot is an open-source driver assistance system that integrates with vehicle control units to provide automated steering, acceleration, and braking. It functions as an automotive robotics middleware, utilizing a specialized runtime environment to process sensor data and execute real-time control commands that manage vehicle dynamics. The platform distinguishes itself through a hardware-agnostic interface that translates standardized driving commands into the proprietary protocols required by a wide range of vehicle makes and models. It employs neural-network-based path planning to predic

NASA/JPL SPICE Toolkit for C – patched for cross-platform compatibility

Tiny Differentiable Simulator is a header-only C++ and CUDA physics library for reinforcement learning and robotics with zero dependencies.

The Robot Operating System Version 2.0 is awesome!

Multibody Dynamics Library designed for Free Floating Robots

Genesis is an embodied AI simulation platform and parallelized robotics simulator designed for training general-purpose robotic agents. It integrates a physics engine for robotics that calculates collisions and movements for rigid bodies, soft tissues, and fluids, alongside a photorealistic 3D rendering engine. The platform features a domain randomization framework to vary environment parameters across parallel simulations, aiding in sim-to-real transfer. It supports the integration of real-world captured light fields and Gaussian splatting to provide photorealistic backgrounds within simulat

The Python Toolbox for Robotics

Bullet3 is a professional physics simulation engine designed for calculating rigid body, soft body, and collision dynamics within 3D environments and robotics applications. It functions as a computational framework for determining complex geometric intersections and contact manifolds between objects in simulated space. The library distinguishes itself through a distributed rendering framework that scales heavy graphical workloads and scene generation tasks across large clusters of machines. This capability enables the production of massive datasets by distributing complex scene generation acr

MuJoCo is a physics simulation engine designed for the dynamics of multi-joint articulated structures. It provides a computational framework for calculating the forces, velocities, and physical interactions of complex models within a virtual environment, supporting research in robotics, biomechanics, and machine learning. The engine utilizes a constraint-based dynamics solver and recursive algorithms to manage the motion of articulated systems. It includes a native graphical interface for real-time visualization, allowing users to inspect physical behaviors and contact dynamics as they occur.

Makani was a project to develop a commercial-scale airborne wind turbine, culminating in a flight test of the Makani M600 off the coast of Norway. All Makani software has now been open-sourced. This repository contains the working Makani flight simulator, controller (autopilot), visualizer, and command center flight monitoring tools. Additionally, almost all avionics firmware is also included, albeit potentially not in a buildable state, due to the removal of some third-party proprietary code. We hope that this code will be inspirational and useful to the kite-based windpower and wider communi

PositionBasedDynamics is a library for the physically-based simulation of rigid bodies, deformable solids and fluids.

Learn Robotics with JdeRobot

RBDyn provides a set of classes and functions to model the dynamics of rigid body systems.

Julia implementation of various rigid body dynamics and kinematics algorithms

ArduPilot is an autonomous vehicle autopilot software platform designed to manage navigation, stabilization, and mission execution for aerial, ground, and marine vehicles. It functions as a comprehensive flight controller that utilizes a real-time operating system kernel to manage concurrent control loops, sensor fusion, and state-based logic for diverse operational modes. The system distinguishes itself through a modular hardware abstraction layer that decouples navigation logic from specific sensor drivers and microcontroller architectures. It employs a message-oriented telemetry protocol t