Qualcomm to Acquire PickNik Robotics, Bringing MoveIt Closer to Dragonwing
Qualcomm will bring PickNik’s manipulation software into its robotics stack while keeping MoveIt open and hardware-agnostic.
Qualcomm has agreed to acquire PickNik Robotics, bringing its robot-manipulation software into Qualcomm’s robotics stack. The announcement disclosed no financial terms; closing remains subject to customary conditions.
PickNik stewards MoveIt, its open-source manipulation framework, and develops commercial MoveIt Pro. Qualcomm says MoveIt 1 and 2 will remain open, community-driven and supported across third-party hardware, while closer integration with Dragonwing and Arduino platforms is planned.
The companies are demonstrating MoveIt Pro on Dragonwing robotics hardware and Arduino VENTUNO Q at ROSCon Toronto this week. Qualcomm’s Dragonwing IQ8 and IQ9 platforms target AMRs, mobile manipulators, inspection robots and cobots, pairing edge compute with robot motion-planning and manipulation software.