Dave Coleman, founder and chief product officer at PickNik Robotics, discusses robotics software and the UX of MoveIt Pro at a Northwest Robotics Alliance talk.
Coleman compares MoveIt Pro to game engines such as Unreal and Unity, which give developers reusable foundations. He says custom robotics software stacks take years and substantial investment, and many companies underestimate the technical and business challenges. PickNik aims to offer a supported platform between traditional industrial automation and building everything from scratch.
Coleman says the platform aims to cut software engineering time by 75% or more. It has evolved from NASA-focused teleoperation tools into a developer platform for building autonomous applications, while retaining teleoperation for human oversight and data collection. Its interface combines robot visualization, camera feeds, behavior trees, simulation, and controls for testing and operating applications.
Coleman describes features shaped by usability principles: flexible screen layouts, live behavior-tree status, undo and redo, error highlighting, breakpoints, and editable parameters. Developers can test changes in simulation without the traditional cycle of writing code, compiling, and relaunching. The platform includes about 200 behaviors, with search and documentation tools to help users find and understand them.
Behavior trees coordinate motion, perception, navigation, grasping, and machine-learning components. Coleman favors combining established control and planning methods with models for tasks such as segmentation and grasping; he describes end-to-end approaches as experimental and requiring application-specific training. PickNik’s prototype LLM feature can generate behavior trees, while its diffusion-policy model uses human demonstrations and synthetic data.
Coleman says MoveIt Pro still targets software developers, while Run mode lets operators launch and restart applications; customers can build their own interfaces for specific users. Easier robot setup and CAD import are future UX priorities, and the product includes example simulations and embedded documentation. In response to questions, he says older equipment needs a usable API and that ROS drivers are often important for integration.
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Jason Osborn of Intel Robotics talks with Dave Coleman, PickNik Robotics founder and chief product officer, at Automate 2026 in Chicago about robot control, compute choices, safety, and a shelf-stocking demo.
