PyPose: A Library for Robot Learning with Physics-based Optimization

Deep learning has had remarkable success in robotic perception, but its data-centric nature suffers when it comes to generalizing to ever-changing environments. By contrast, physics-based optimization generalizes better, but it does not perform as well in complicated tasks due to the lack of high-level semantic information and reliance on manual parametric tuning. To take advantage of these two complementary worlds, we present PyPose: a robotics-oriented, PyTorch-based library that combines deep perceptual models with physics-based optimization techniques, so that users can focus on their novel applications. The principle of PyPose is user-friendly, efficient, and interpretable, with a tidy and well-organized architecture. With an imperative style interface, it can be easily integrated into real-world vision and robotic applications. Besides, it supports parallel computing of any order gradients of Lie groups and Lie algebras and $2^{\text{nd}}$-order optimizers, such as trust region methods. Experiments show that PyPose achieves more than $10\times$ speedup in computation compared to the state-of-the-art libraries. To boost future research, we provide concrete examples for several fields of vision and robotic learning, including SLAM, planning, control, and inertial navigation.