Bug Fixes​

• Fixed version mismatch in 8.6.1 falsely reporting as 8.6.0 in the UI and causing a warning to occur about updating unnecessarily.

Reference Application Changes​

• Adds pick and place objectives in factory_sim "Pick Brackets from Left Bin" and "Pick and Place Brackets from Left Bin" which demonstrate basic examples of picking automotive brackets from a bin, placing them precisely on a jig, waiting until a task is completed, and then picking and dropping them in another bin.

Major Features​

Training Data Collection with Meta Quest​

MoveIt Pro can now collect teleoperation data using the Meta Quest. Check out the Hardware Guide.

Improved Vector Operations​

Added general vector operations that work on vectors on the blackboard of any type, including GetElementOfVector, GetSizeOfVector, InsertInVector, RemoveFromVector, ReplaceInVector, add ResetVector Behaviors. Uses type BT::Any.

Create New Objectives & Behaviors Easier​

It's now easier to access the popup forms for new Behaviors and Objectives, with a combined "+" button accessible from both sidebar modes.

UI Changes​

• The UI now remembers your preferences on showing and hiding the URDF and point cloud between tabs in Pro and in your browser.
• Improved the "New Objective" form to display the target location for the new Objective.
• Added descriptions for plugin types in the "New Custom Behavior" form
• Added an "About MoveIt Pro" popup modal to declutter the settings dropdown menu and provide a centralized location for company and product information.
• Hide right connector dot in collapsed Behavior Tree subtree nodes
• Added a Favorites section to the Objective sidebar to allow more favorites to be displayed without getting cut-off.
• Added placeholder examples for vector input fields in Behavior Tree port editing

Enhancements​

• MTC Tasks can now be initialized with a timeout parameter to control the execution time of the task.

Behavior Changes​

• InitializeMTCTask now accepts a timeout parameter to set an overall timeout for the MTC Task, in seconds. This is useful for ensuring that the MTC Task does not run indefinitely and can be used to control the execution time of the task.
• Renamed Tool behaviors to more general URDF behaviors:
  • AddTool → AddURDF (deprecated AddTool still available)
  • AttachTool → AttachURDF (deprecated AttachTool still available)
  • DetachTool → DetachURDF (deprecated DetachTool still available)
  • RemoveToolFromScene → RemoveURDFFromScene (deprecated RemoveToolFromScene still available)
• Added URDF/XACRO file validation in AddURDF behavior

Internal API Changes​

• Renamed ToolChangingCapability to URDFPlanningSceneCapability
• Renamed ROS service messages:
  • moveit_studio_agent_msgs/srv/AddTool → moveit_studio_agent_msgs/srv/AddURDF
  • moveit_studio_agent_msgs/srv/AttachTool → moveit_studio_agent_msgs/srv/AttachURDF
  • moveit_studio_agent_msgs/srv/DetachOrRemoveTool → moveit_studio_agent_msgs/srv/DetachOrRemoveURDF
• Updated service names:
  • add_tool_to_scene → add_urdf_to_scene
  • attach_tool → attach_urdf
  • detach_tool → detach_urdf
  • remove_tool_from_scene → remove_urdf_from_scene
• Updated service field names:
  • tool_name → urdf_name
  • tool_urdf → urdf_string
  • tool_pose → urdf_pose

Documentation Improvements​

• Added comprehensive Doxygen documentation for the PlanningSceneMonitor class, providing detailed technical reference for developers integrating with MoveIt Pro's planning scene monitoring capabilities.
• Added comprehensive config.yaml reference guide that documents all available configuration options, including hardware, moveit_params, ros2_control, objectives, and ros_global_params sections with detailed examples and validation rules.
• Simplified Franka Research 3 (FR3) Hardware Setup Guide.

Bug Fixes​

• Fixes issue where two markers overlapping each other would move both on drag. Now only moves the one closest to camera
• Fixes issue where the "View" select button in the Visualization pane could sometimes overflow and be cut off
• Fixed an issue where toast notifications that were hidden by log level rules took up vertical space in the toast container despite being invisible
• Fixed an issue that can cause RetrieveWaypoint to time out
• Fixed an issue where waypoints named with just a number (for instance "11") would cause a crash.
• Fixed objective creation to use the last entry in objective_library_paths from the config.yaml for saving new objectives, allowing flexible configuration of where objectives are stored.
• Fixed an issue where velocity scale was not being applied in GeneratePointToPointTrajectory.
• Fixed a bug where the RetrieveJointStateParameter behavior would persist state between runs, possibly causing stale data to be retrieved.
• Fixes bug where top bar navigation could be pushed out of view
• Fixes bug where heartbeat topic would slow when working with larger behavior trees

Major Features​

Enhanced Visualize Pose Markers​

Enhanced Visualize Pose behavior to display text information in Marker messages for improved debugging and visualization.

Execute Trajectories with 180 Deg Turns​

MoveIt Pro now supports executing trajectories that make 180 degree turns, which is common in MTC solutions. So you can now use ConvertMtcSolutionToJointTrajectory and execute the resulting trajectories with ExecuteFollowJointTrajectory, even if those contain 180 degree turns.

UI Changes​

• MoveIt Pro browser tabs now have more descriptive titles to aid in multi-tasking.
• Plus buttons on Control and Decorator nodes in behavior trees will no longer show unless they are connected to the graph

Documentation Improvements​

• Refactored Tutorial 2 (Runtime SDK & Extensions) to be much more interactive and beginner-friendly with improved hands-on examples.
• Refactored Tutorial 4 (Motion Planning) to be more interactive with improved hands-on examples.
• Added documentation for benchmarking AprilTag pose detection accuracy using the new april_tag_sim configuration.
• Added Franka Research 3 (FR3) Hardware Setup Guide.

Bug Fixes​

• Fixed an issue where newly added behavior tree nodes would persist in the underlying XML document. The visual state, XML document, and saved state are now properly synchronized during undo/redo operations.
• Fixes issue where renaming an objective used as a subtree in other objectives did not reflect new name in other objectives until reloaded
• Removed an unintended 40-character limit on Objective names when creating or editing Objective details.
• Fixed an issue where the initial navigation to the Run tab when loading MoveIt Pro created two entries in browser history.
• Fixed example workspace incorrect git version detection when multiple tags are associated to the same commit.
• Fixed a bug where planning scene information wasn't being added to the MTCSolution provided by ValidateTrajectory
• Fixed a bug where the right-hand handle on behavior tree nodes was sometimes unusable to create connections.
• Fixed an issue where unconnected nodes in behavior trees would be removed when adding new nodes via the Plus button.
• Debug MTC solutions generated by PlanCartesianPath now properly include the start scene.
• Print out more details if Clipseg fails to initialize with "Failed to initialize the clipseg interface..." error message.

Major Features​

A ton of exciting new UI features are included in this release!

Support for multiple planning groups in IMarker Teleoperation​

The Interactive Marker (IMarker) teleoperation panel now supports multiple planning groups and end effectors, allowing users to select which planning group to teleoperate.

Disable Subsections of your Behavior Tree​

A long requested feature during development and testing cycles, you can now comment and uncomment individual Behaviors, including entire subtrees of functionality. This aids in easier and faster debugging and development.

View All Behavior Ports​

By default MoveIt Pro hides ports beyond the top 5, in order to keep the Behavior Tree compact and more viewable. However there are use cases, such as when searching with Ctrl+F or creating documentation, where you might want to expand all ports on each Behavior. You can now use the checkbox to "Show All Ports" in the Behavior Tree editor menu!

Use Quaternions Easier with RPY​

Quaternions are not intuitive for humands, but roll pitch yaw is. We've added a popup UI dialog that allows you to enter orientation values instead of Quaternions.

Inline Documentation for Subtree Ports​

When adding and editing sub-trees, the port descriptions and port types are now UI-visible for sub-tree remapped ports. This makes working with subtrees much more intuitive.

Show/Hide URDFs and Point Clouds​

It's now possible to hide the URDF robot model and any visualized point clouds from the visualizer from the newly renamed "View" menu.

Edit Behavior Tree Comments in UI​

You can now edit comments directly in Behavior Tree editor, improving the readability and in-line documentation capabilities of MoveIt Pro.

Enhancements​

• When launching the example workspace after an upgrade, you will now be prompted if you want to upgrade the example workspace.

Other UI Changes​

• Added a pin button to keep the objectives sidebar open during objective execution.
• The Expand/Collapse All button in the behavior tree sidebar now automatically hides during search operations and reappears when the search is cleared, providing a cleaner and more focused search experience.
• Increases clickable area of sidebar buttons
• Points in a visualized point cloud will be slightly larger now, making the point cloud more visible.
• Add UID display to node names in Behavior Tree status view for better correlation with Blackboard viewer
• Add clearer warning to inform users they must build after creating a new Behavior

Reference Application Changes​

• New example configs: Franka FR3 Single Arm and Dual Arm (formerly the "Panda" robot)
• Adds "ML Auto Grasp Object from Clicked Point" example Objective for using machine learning grasp inference with click based image and point cloud segmentation.

New Behaviors​

• Added GetContourFromPointCloudSlice, which creates a planar contour that is offset around a point cloud slice. This can be used to generate tool paths for surface treatment operations.
• Added ReversePoseStampedVector to reverse the direction of a vector of poses, such as a Cartesian path.
• Added CropPosesInBox to filter a vector of poses, such as a Cartesian path, based on a bounding box.

Behavior Changes​

• Enhanced VisualizePath to accept a name input to visualize multiple paths at once, and to optionally show the poses with orientation axes in addition to the path line.
• Removed non-functional GetMasks2DAction, ShapeCompletionAction, and CalibratePoseAction behaviors.
• The MergePointClouds Behavior now exposes an option to align the point clouds using ICP when merging them. This can be used to incrementally register multiple point clouds to each other and minimize the alignment error.
• The SolveIKQueries Behavior has been updated to use our most recent IK pipeline, and now exposes a new port called check_collisions to enable or disable collision checking during IK solving.
• Adds a publisher timeout parameter to the GetImage behavior to configure how long to wait for an image publisher to advertise.
• SaveToYaml behaviors now have an optional overwrite port that users can set to false in order to append to existing YAML files. Previously, these behaviors would always overwrite the file.
• The Joint Trajectory Admittance Controller (JTAC) can now control chains that don't start at the URDF root. This required adding a new planning_group_name configuration parameter to the JTAC config, with the name of the planning group that the JTAC will control. This planning group name must be a valid group defined in the SRDF file. The joints config parameter is no longer required, since the JTAC will automatically determine the joints from the planning group.
• The JTAC can now control non-serial chains when admittance is disabled, such as 2 robot arms mounted to a mobile base.

Documentation Improvements​

• Added How-To guide on using GetGraspPoseFromPointCloud to automatically infer grasp poses using machine learning from point clouds.
• Expanded "Runtime SDK & Extensions" tutorial and moved it to Tutorial 2.
• Expanded "Motion Planning" tutorial with more detail including table on all types of planners and solvers
• Added heartbeat info to SDK tutorial
• Added documentation for moveit_pro_ci and moveit_pro_lint
• Update mujoco migration guide for mobile base
• Reorder and improve 'Tool changing' docs to make it more clear how it works and how it can be used for vacuum grippers

Other Improvements​

• Hardware acceleration for Radeon GPUs is enabled by default. The digital twin simulation engine will use discrete graphics cards (NVIDIA or AMD) when available, otherwise all computation is done on the CPU.

Bug Fixes​

• Fixed a number of bugs relating to specifying objective parameters in the UI. Reminder: LoadObjectiveParameters is deprecated and is planned for removal in 9.0.
• SwitchController should no longer time out on service discovery on slower machines.
• It is no longer possible to edit built-in MoveIt Pro Objectives that core functionality depends upon. If you would like to create your own version, duplicate the objective.
• Improved performance of the SetAdmittanceParameters and AppendOrientationConstraint behaviors' interactive parameter editors in the UI.
• Fixed bug where SaveToYaml behaviors overwrite YAML files instead of appending to them when a namespace is specified.
• Fixed a UI crash that could occur if a custom C++ behavior included invalid HTML in its description field.
• Fixes deadlock seen with GetImage by allowing halting.
• Failure to look up the Objectives directory of your config package while creating an Objective now contains more useful information.
• Fixed a bug related to undoing and redoing changes to objectives in the Build tab while also adding nodes via the add button.

Migration Guide​

• The Joint Trajectory Admittance Controller (JTAC) config now accepts a planning_group_name parameter, which is the name of the planning group that the JTAC will control. The joints and base_frame parameters are now deprecated. If your ros2_control.yaml file defines a Joint Trajectory Admittance Controller, please update it to include the planning_group_name parameter. The deprecated joints and base_link parameters will be removed in the next major release.
• Reminder: LoadObjectiveParameters is deprecated and is planned for removal in 9.0.

Bug Fixes​

• Fixed a handful of bugs in the satellite servicing simulation example.
• Fixed a UI crash that could occur if a custom C++ behavior included invalid HTML in its description field.

Major Features​

Quick Add Behaviors​

Introducing a more streamlined way to build Behavior Trees using a “+” button directly next to applicable Behaviors, like Sequences. This button opens a searchable dialog for quickly adding behaviors inline, reducing the need to manually drag nodes in.

Ability to Move from Subtree Back to Parent Behavior Tree​

You can now easily navigate back to a parent Behavior Tree after drilling into a subtree. Users previously found it unintuitive to use the browser back button.

Track a Pose While Avoiding Obstacles​

The new MPCPointCloudClearance Behavior tracks a pose in real-time while avoiding a point cloud using model predictive control (MPC). An example Objective is now available in lab_sim.

Enhancements​

UI Changes​

• Improved the appearance of errors, warnings, and info messages that are published to the UI from the LoggerROS class.

Behaviors​

New Behaviors​

• The MPCPointCloudClearance Behavior tracks a pose while avoiding a point cloud using model predictive control.
• Adds Decorator ForEachUntilSuccess for iterating through vectors and until the subtree succeeds on an element.

Behavior Changes​

• The ActivateControllers Behavior has been deprecated in favor of the SwitchController Behavior, which provides more flexibility in managing controller activation / deactivation. Please switch to using the SwitchController Behavior in your applications.
• A new Joint Velocity Controller allows for the control of robot joints using velocity setpoints. It takes as input desired joint velocities in a control_msgs/JointJog message and computes the next joint positions and velocities to send to the robot, while respecting the robot's joint velocity and acceleration constraints. This controller can be used for collecting ML teleoperation training data, or in conjunction with higher-level closed-loop controllers such as visual servoing or learned policies.

Documentation Improvements​

• Improved the Tool Changing guide to describe how it can be used for other tools like vacuum grippers.
• Added a troubleshooting item for ros2 cli verbs reporting incorrect output.

Other Improvements​

• This release includes a new controller, the Joint Velocity Controller, which allows for the control of robot joints using velocity setpoints. It takes as input desired joint velocities in a control_msgs/JointJog message and computes the next joint positions and velocities to send to the robot, while respecting the robot's joint velocity and acceleration constraints. This controller can be used for teleoperation or in conjunction with higher-level closed-loop controllers such as visual servoing or learned policies.
• Deleting a port from an objective will also remove the port everywhere the objective is used as a subtree.
• PlanCartesianPath and other Behaviors using Path IK (e.g. SetupMTCMoveAlongFrameAxis) now support tip links that are not in the planning group, but are descendants of it.

Bug Fixes​

• Fixes bug where sometimes changing an Objective's name would toast an error that it is not found.
• Fixed a bug where a list of IP addresses passed to the CycloneDDS configuration generator script could include extraneous whitespace.
• Fixed a bug where logs generated by the LogMessage behavior don't show as expected in the UI.
• FollowJointTrajectoryWithAdmittance action calls will populate the feedback time_from_start with the trajectory point's desired time_from_start.
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to crash the objective editor by adding an objective to itself as a subtree.
• Fixed a bug where a MarkerArray that included multiple markers with the same namespace and id would not display correctly. Note: that we're not sure allowing multiple markers with the same namespace and ID is deliberate in RViz, but we ensured that we now have the same behavior.
• Fixed a few visual and performance issues in the AppendOrientationConstraint interactive constraint builder.
• The blackboard viewer now displays type information for types without a registered JSON serializer in BehaviorTree.CPP.
• Fixed an issue where SetupMTCMoveAlongFrameAxis would throw an exception under some conditions.
• Fixed some performance issues with the UI parsing Nav2 map updates.

Migration Notes​

• The ActivateControllers Behavior has been deprecated in favor of the SwitchController Behavior, which provides more flexibility in managing controller activation / deactivation. Please switch to using the SwitchController Behavior in your applications.
• Controller names given as input to Subtrees and Behaviors (e.g. in a controller_names port) no longer need to be prefixed with a slash. Existing pipelines will still work with the old format for backwards compatibility, but it is recommended to use the new format for consistency, e.g. controller_names="/joint_trajectory_controller" should be changed to controller_names="joint_trajectory_controller". This change will be enforced in the next breaking release (9.0).

Major Features​

Multi-Window Support​

Feeling crunched on screen space, but have multiple monitors? There is now a "New Window" option in the settings menu that opens MoveIt Pro in a new tab. This is useful, for example, in having one screen for editing and monitoring large Behavior Trees, and a second screen for monitoring camera feeds and visualizations. Note: it is recommended that you don't have the same view pane type open on multiple windows, as there are currently some known limitations.

Full Screen Mode​

There is now a button to switch between full screen and windowed mode in the settings menu, allowing for more screen space and enhancing usage as a robot operator terminal.

Enhancements​

Behavior Changes​

• GeneratePointToPointTrajectory can now take a target_state that contains a subset of the joints in the planning group. The positions and velocities of all joints not included in the target_state will be set to the start_state values.
• Add a configurable timeout parameters to the CallTriggerService Behavior.
• Make waitForServerAvailableTimeout configurable in ServiceClientBehaviorBase through optional getWaitForServerAvailableTimeout function.

Other Improvements​

• Added a new spline trajectory fitting class that fits piecewise splines to a set of points using convex optimization, and ensures no dynamic memory allocation during optimization or evaluation.
• Added support for retrieving metadata from ONNX models, including custom metadata entries and model version information.
• Added moveit_pro_ml::DiffusionPolicy to the moveit_pro_ml package. This class exposes an interface for running a diffusion policy to generate trajectories.
• Reduces peak VRAM memory consumption when running ML models
• Bump ROS 2 Humble snapshot to 2025-05-16.
• The version number for MoveIt Pro is printed to the terminal when moveit_pro run is called.

Bug Fixes​

• Fixed caching problem causing updated server-side meshes not to appear in the UI.
• Fixed an issue where deleting a subtree and undoing only adds back the node without its edges.
• Fixed an issue in the CreateJointState behavior where the created RobotJointState did not contain the names the user specified on the 'names' input port.
• Fixed an issue where extra binaries were being installed and overwriting parts of our source build, breaking the moveit_core and moveit_ros_planning targets. No migration is required.
• Fixed large stack traces caused by unhandled exceptions in launch files.
• The Velocity Force Controller (VFC) now can control chains that don't start at the URDF root. This required adding a new planning_group_name configuration parameter to the VFC config, with the name of the planning group that the VFC will control. This planning group name must be a valid group defined in the SRDF file. The joints config parameter is no longer required, since the VFC will automatically determine the joints from the planning group.
• Fixed some performance issues in simulation which resulted in TFs being published at a slower rate.
• Timestamps for image and point cloud messages from simulation cameras are more accurate.
• Fixed an issue where commands in the MoveIt Pro shell can overwrite characters in the terminal prompt.
• Fixed an issue where deleting the build artifacts would leave the install artifacts, resulting in a broken state.
• Fixed an issue where the Rest API failed to format objective XML files and printed "Error formatting XML file..." in the terminal.
• Fixed issue of marker not appearing in the UI when being added immediately after a marker delete message.
• Fixed issue where toasts would not immediately clear with dismiss button
• Fixed zram-config breaking installation despite not being a required package, marking it properly as a recommended package.
• Fixed Teleoperate settings button in Waypoint control mode - button is now properly disabled and grayed out while remaining visible.
• RecordJointTrajectory uses the incoming message header for time stamps instead of system time.
• Fixed issue where keepout zone IMarker would sometimes stop dragging

Migration Guide​

• The Velocity Force Controller (VFC) config now accepts a planning_group_name parameter, which is the name of the planning group that the VFC will control. The joints and base_link parameters are now deprecated. If your ros2_control.yaml file defines a Velocity Force Controller, please update it to include the planning_group_name parameter. The deprecated joints and base_link parameters will be removed in the next major release.

Bug Fixes​

• Fill in PlanCartesianPath debug solution only if output port is set.

Bug Fixes​

• Fixed an issue where ROS dependencies aren't being installed due to an expired key.