Hello World

Let’s plan a robot motion in 5 lines.

Rust

use kinetic::prelude::*;

fn main() -> Result<()> {
    let start = [0.0, -1.0, 0.8, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0];
    let goal = Goal::joints([1.0, -0.5, 0.3, 0.2, -0.3, 0.5]);
    let result = plan("ur5e", &start, &goal)?;
    println!("{} waypoints in {:?}", result.num_waypoints(), result.planning_time);
    Ok(())
}

Python

import kinetic
import numpy as np

start = np.array([0.0, -1.0, 0.8, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0])
goal = kinetic.Goal.joints(np.array([1.0, -0.5, 0.3, 0.2, -0.3, 0.5]))
traj = kinetic.plan("ur5e", start, goal)
print(f"{traj.num_waypoints} waypoints, {traj.duration:.3f}s")

What Just Happened?

In those 5 lines, kinetic:

1. Loaded the UR5e robot — a 6-DOF industrial arm from Universal Robots. Kinetic parsed its URDF model, extracted joint limits, and built a collision sphere model. (See: Robots and URDF)

2. Defined start and goal — joint configurations in radians. The UR5e has 6 joints, so each array has 6 values. start is where the arm is now; goal is where you want it. (See: Glossary → Joint Configuration)

3. Planned a path — using RRT-Connect, a sampling-based algorithm that grows two search trees (one from start, one from goal) until they connect. The result is a sequence of collision-free waypoints through joint space. (See: Motion Planning)

4. Time-parameterized the path — converted the geometric path into a timed trajectory with velocity and acceleration profiles that respect the robot’s joint limits. (See: Trajectory Generation)

5. Returned the result — a PlanningResult (Rust) or Trajectory (Python) containing timed waypoints you can send to a robot controller.

What Do the Numbers Mean?

• start = [0.0, -1.0, 0.8, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0] — Joint angles in radians. Joint 1 at 0°, joint 2 at -57°, joint 3 at 46°, etc.
• goal = [1.0, -0.5, 0.3, 0.2, -0.3, 0.5] — The target joint configuration.
• 14 waypoints — The planner found a path through 14 intermediate configurations.
• 237ms — Planning took 237 milliseconds (this varies — RRT is probabilistic).

Try This

1. Change the goal to [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0] (zero configuration) and plan again
2. Try a different robot: replace "ur5e" with "franka_panda" (7 DOF — the arrays need 7 values)
3. Print all waypoints: for wp in result.waypoints { println!("{:?}", wp); }

Next

Your First Robot →