Drake: robotics planning, control and analysis toolbox

github.com

Curious if anyone else is currently taking the class (Underactuated Robotics, Russ Tedrake @MIT), or has taken it previously? Through edX or at MIT? Any comments?

I have not completed it (on edX, and not sure if I will due to constraints on my time) but I think I would recommend it.

Also: Russ says they are running Drake (in MATLAB) directly on their Atlas robot (an android robot from Boston Dynamics, now owned by Google.) As they say, this is borderline crazy but seems to work and allows them to make rapid changes to their control code. If I recall correctly he said their control loop was in excess of 300 cycles per second, is this right?

Anybody out their want to comment on this or chime in with a comparison to another robot control system?

I took this class last Fall at MIT and it's really really good. I would recommend it to anyone interested in this topic.

Also it's great that all their code is open source. It's amazing what they can achieve with trajectory optimization.

I was also impressed that they were able to run MATLAB code live. Although to be fair, they are calling efficient commercial solvers implemented in C++ or other languages under the hood.

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