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Pinocchio

  • Software
  • Robot arms and industry
  • Library

Pinocchio is an open-source C++ library, with Python bindings, for fast rigid multi-body dynamics and kinematics computations. It is mainly aimed at robotics and also used in other fields.

Source on GitHub: github.com/stack-of-tasks/pinocchio (opens in a new tab). Facts read at commit 700472f (opens in a new tab).

Licenses

Code
BSD-2-Clause (opens in a new tab)

Read by Robotheca from LICENSE (opens in a new tab) (BSD-2-Clause) at commit 700472f (opens in a new tab), on 16 Oct 2026.

Commercial use
Yes

What it does

  • Implements rigid body algorithms for poly-articulated systems, including forward kinematics and forward/inverse dynamics.
  • Provides analytical derivatives of the main rigid body algorithms, supporting gradient-based optimization and control.
  • Handles closed-loop mechanisms, frictional contact solvers, centroidal dynamics and kinematic/dynamic regressors.
  • Reads robot description formats including URDF, SDF, MJCF and SRDF, or models can be built programmatically.
  • Built on Eigen for linear algebra and coal for collision detection; header-only C++17/20/23 template library.
  • Installable through Conda, pip (Linux only), Docker or ROS packages; several visualizers are supported.

Written by Robotheca from the project's README (opens in a new tab) at commit 700472f.

Getting started

Difficulty
Advanced
Hardware it needs, as the project states it
It notes that its performance benchmarks were run on a laptop with an Intel Core i7 CPU @ 2.4 GHz, and that it is supported on Windows, Mac OS X, Unix and Linux.

Maintenance

Status
Active: a commit in the last 90 days
Newest commit
13 Oct 2026 on devel
Latest release
pinocchio 4.1.0 (7 Jul 2026)

Checked on GitHub on 16 Oct 2026.

Links

Robots on Robotheca that use it

No robot on Robotheca is linked to it yet. Links come from a robot's robot.yaml, from its dependency files read as text, or from Robotheca's editors.

Robotheca lists software as a reference: nothing is hosted or run here, and every fact links to where it was read.