Giskardpy is an open source library for implementing motion control frameworks. It uses constraint and optimization based task space control to control the whole body of mobile manipulators.
This is a pure python library with the core functionality. To use it with ROS you need the following repos, which use giskardpy to create an action server and implement ROS interfaces:
- ROS1: https://github.com/SemRoCo/giskardpy_ros/tree/ros1-noetic-main
- ROS2: https://github.com/SemRoCo/giskardpy_ros/tree/ros2-jazzy-main
sudo apt install virtualenvwrapper
echo "export WORKON_HOME=~/venvs" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "source /usr/share/virtualenvwrapper/virtualenvwrapper.sh" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
mkdir -p $WORKON_HOME
# --system-site-packages is only required if you are using ROS
mkvirtualenv giskardpy --system-site-packages
To use it do:
workon giskardpy
Switch to your venv, if you use one.
workon giskardpy
Choose a place where you want to build giskardpy and clone it. This should NOT be in a ROS workspace.
mkdir -p ~/libs && cd ~/libs
git clone -b giskard_library https://github.com/SemRoCo/giskardpy.git
cd giskardpy
Install Giskardpy, -e is optional but prevents you from having to rebuild every time the code changes.
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
pip3 install -e .
Giskard supports alternative QP solvers, but they are all slower than qpSWIFT, which is the default.
gurobi: Commercial solver. Useful for debugging during development.sudo pip3 install gurobipy- You can apply for a free academic license or buy one here: https://www.gurobi.com/academia/academic-program-and-licenses/
- If you have vpn access to or are in the local network of the IAI of the University of Bremen, follow these instructions: https://ai.uni-bremen.de/wiki/intern/adm/gurobi
Giskard uses Adrian Röfer's bullet bindings instead of the official ones, as they are much faster for our use case. Install them like this:
workon giskardpy
mkdir -p ~/libs && cd ~/libs # choose a place where you want to build pybullet
git clone -b jazzy https://github.com/SemRoCo/bullet3.git
cd bullet3 # be sure to be in the bullet3 folder
./build_better_pybullet.sh # this script will also clone and build pybind11 into libs
source ~/.bashrc # the script adds a python path modification to your bashrc
To test your installation do:
workon giskardpy
python3 -c "import betterpybullet"
If it doesn't work, make sure that your $PYTHONPATH includes something like
/path/to/your/bullet3/build_cmake/better_python:/path/to/your/bullet3/examples/pybullet.
https://github.com/SemRoCo/giskardpy/wiki
@phdthesis{stelter25giskard,
author = {Simon Stelter},
title = {A Robot-Agnostic Kinematic Control Framework: Task Composition via Motion Statecharts and Linear Model Predictive Control},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.26092/elib/3743},
}