[COMPARE] Ecosystem Digest, April 13, 2026

[COMPARE Ecosystem]

COMPARE Ecosystem Digest, April 13, 2026

Hello COMPARErs! If you are seeing this message, consider it an open invitation to utilize this space! We encourage all members of the ecosystem to engage with your fellow COMPARErs, whether that be through posting about new open-source and benchmarking assets you find, posting questions to gather feedback from the community, or to promote your own work within the ecosystem. There’s many ways you can engage: Make a post in the COMPARE Slack in any of the available channels: open-source #software or #hardware, #datasets, #benchmarking assets, upcoming #events, #random fun, or just a #general inquiry. Want to host a dedicated discussion space for your project or event in the COMPARE Slack? Shoot Adam Norton (COMPARE Community Facilitator) a message! Have an announcement you want featured in the next COMPARE Ecosystem Digest? Shoot an e-mail to compare....@gmail.com! Interested in involving COMPARE in your next event, workshop, or competition? Get in contact using any of the methods above. Speaking of events, this year’s New England Manipulation Symposium (NEMS) has just been announced: NEMS 2026 will be hosted by UMass Amherst on June 16-17, 2026!  NEMS 2026 will be held at UMass Amherst in the Computer Sciences Laboratories (CSL) Building. This year, we aim to encourage and highlight work that includes contributions to open-source and/or benchmarking. A subset of submissions will be highlighted throughout the symposium for serving as excellent examples of (a) leveraging existing open-source software or hardware, (b) contributing their work as open-source with sufficient documentation, (c) benchmarking the performance of their work by comparing to others, and/or (d) contributing a new benchmarking resource such as an evaluation protocol, artifact, or dataset.  We will also host a COMPARE workshop on day 2 focusing on integration, reproducibility, and benchmarking of robot manipulation. More details coming soon!

Here’s what you may have missed and what’s coming up soon: A new major release for OMPL is available, new open-source hardware has been added to robot-manipulation.org, NEMS 2026 has been announced, and ERAS 2026 is next month!  💬 = recent discussions in the 🤖 = recent additions to

Open-Source Software Components Motion Planning 💬 #software: New MAJOR release for the Open Motion Planning Library! The new release of OMPL (version 2.0) includes several additions, including VAMP integration, and changes aimed at improving functionality, compatibility, and the user experience. [OMPL] Completely rewritten Python bindings. Enabled by default if Python is detected at build time. Prebuilt OMPL Python modules can now be installed via pip install ompl. VAMP Integration Added VAMP (Vector-Accelerated Motion Planning) as an optional high-performance backend for collision checking and motion validation VAMP leverages SIMD instructions to accelerate forward kinematics and collision detection, achieving planning speeds up to 25 kHz C++ and Python demos show usage with common robots (Panda, UR5, Fetch, Baxter) New geometric planners: AORRTC: Asymptotically Optimal RRT-Connect BLIT*: Bidirectional Lazy Informed Trees TRRT*, ATRRT: asymptotically optimal version of T-RRT and an anytime (optimal) version of T-RRT, respectively New kinodynamic planner: HySST, an adaptation of the SST planner for hybrid systems. New state space: ThrochoidStateSpace, an SE(2)-like state space where distance and interpolation is defined for Dubins vehicles subject to constant drift. This is useful in planning for aerial/maritime drones subject to constant wind/current. Planner Arena has been completely rewritten in Python. It is now distributed separately and can be installed via pip install plannerarena. OMPL.app has been deprecated. New demos show how to use OMPL with real robots and visualize the results, eliminating the need for OMPL.app. Bug fixes. You can download OMPL and find more info on its homepage: https://ompl.kavrakilab.org

Open-Source Hardware Designs 🤖 Hardware Designs: 4 new entries (53 total): PincOpen [end-effector] parallel finger gripper from Pollen Robotics  TF-Gripper [end-effector] tactile parallel jaw gripper TRLC-DK1 [data collection hardware] leader-follower robots Your Own Robot (YOR) [arms] dual-arm mobile manipulator

Events 💬 #events: New England Manipulation Symposium (NEMS) 2026 has been announced! NEMS 2026 will be hosted by the University of Massachusetts Amherst on June 16-17, 2026, and will include a COMPARE workshop on day 2. [NEMS 2026] NEMS is an annual research symposium in the Northeast focused on robot manipulation research of all kinds, including mechanics, mechanisms, control, learning, perception, and planning, with two main goals:  (1) to provide an opportunity for members of the Northeast robot manipulation research community to meet and talk in person, share ideas, and become familiar with each other’s work, and  (2) to provide students and early-career researchers a platform from which to present their latest work.  Registration is free and includes lunch, coffee breaks, and an evening reception. All attendees are encouraged to register in advance so we can plan accordingly. Submissions are sought in the form of 1-2 page abstracts to be presented as posters with a subset to be selected for short oral presentations. In the afternoon of day 2 of NEMS 2026, we will hold two workshop sessions: (1) Workshop on Integration, Reproducibility, and Benchmarking of Robot Manipulation, and (2) Workshop on Soft Robotics for Manipulation. More information on these workshop sessions will be available soon! See the NEMS 2026 webpage for more info: https://www.robot-manipulation.org/nems-2026  💬 #events: RoboSoft 2026: Unfortunately we missed the RoboSoft conference in Kanazawa, Japan last week. What did we miss? Post about it in the COMPARE Slack or submit them using the links at the bottom of this e-mail!  [RoboSoft 2026] What’s coming up soon? ERAS 2026: IEEE RAS International Conference on Engineering Reliable Autonomous Systems (ERAS) 2026, May 28-29, 2026, Zagreb, Croatia Subscribe to the Robot Manipulation Events Google Calendar to stay in the loop!

🤖 Have suggestions for open-source products or benchmarking assets that should be added? Submit them here! https://forms.gle/LHrtmDpm82X4qrDk6 🤖 Have suggestions for events we should add? Use this form to let us know! https://forms.gle/PfiSRjcuQnavbPNS9

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Adam Norton, Community Facilitator, COMPARE Ecosystem

Improving Open-Source and Benchmarking for Robot Manipulation

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