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What is MRPT?

MRPT is a well-established C++ framework for mobile robotics, originally developed in 2005 at the University of Málaga and actively maintained to this day. Over the years, contributions from the community have evolved it into a robust, modular toolkit widely used in both academic research and industry.

MRPT 3.0 is a major refactoring that modernises the build system (colcon-based modular packages), cleans up the public API, and aligns with modern C++17 standards while preserving the data structures and algorithms at the core of MRPT.

Key capabilities

Area	What's included
SLAM	MonteCarlo Localization, RBPF, pose-graph optimization
Geometry	SE(2)/SE(3) Lie groups, rigid body transforms, point clouds
Probabilistic	Kalman filters, particle filters, PDFs over poses & maps
Maps	Occupancy grids, point maps, landmark maps, voxel maps
Sensors	LiDAR, stereo/RGB-D cameras, IMU, GPS, Velodyne, …
Visualization	3-D scene graph (mrpt::viz), GUI windows, plot widgets
Navigation	Reactive nav, path planning, PTG-based obstacle avoidance
Python	pybind11 bindings for all major modules

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Getting started

Install from ROS repositories

# ROS 1 (deprecated)
sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-mrpt2

# ROS 2
sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-mrpt-*

ROS2 build status for mrpt3

Distro	Build dev	Release
ROS 2 Humble (u22.04)
ROS 2 Jazzy (u24.04)
ROS 2 Kilted (u24.04)
ROS 2 Lyrical (u26.04)
ROS 2 Rolling (u26.04)

Binary package build status per package, distro, OS and architecture:

Package	ROS 2 Humble BinBuild	ROS 2 Jazzy BinBuild	ROS 2 Kilted BinBuild	ROS 2 Lyrical BinBuild	ROS 2 Rolling BinBuild
mrpt_core
mrpt_io
mrpt_serialization
mrpt_system
mrpt_rtti
mrpt_containers
mrpt_typemeta
mrpt_random
mrpt_config
mrpt_data
mrpt_expr
mrpt_math
mrpt_poses
mrpt_tfest
mrpt_bayes
mrpt_obs
mrpt_topography
mrpt_maps
mrpt_graphs
mrpt_opengl
mrpt_img
mrpt_viz
mrpt_imgui
mrpt_imgui_vendor
mrpt_gui
mrpt_nav
mrpt_kinematics
mrpt_slam
mrpt_graphslam
mrpt_hwdrivers
mrpt_common
mrpt_comms
mrpt_libapps_cli
mrpt_libapps_gui
mrpt_apps_cli
mrpt_apps_gui
mrpt_examples_cpp

Each cell stacks the badges for that ROS 2 distro, in this order (when available):

• Ubuntu (amd64)
• Ubuntu (arm64)
• RHEL (x86_64) -- not available for Humble: pybind11-dev has no RHEL 8 mapping in rosdep, so mrpt3 cannot be built there.
• Fedora (x86_64) -- only available since ROS 2 Lyrical (Fedora was not a supported buildfarm target for earlier distros).

A red/failing badge means the package attempted to build for that platform but currently fails (e.g. an unresolved transitive dependency); a missing badge means that platform is not offered at all for that distro.

mrpt_imgui_vendor is pending its first rosdistro release, so its badges will show as unbuilt until that merge lands.

Install (Ubuntu/Debian)

sudo apt install libmrpt-dev mrpt-apps

Check your distro version at Ubuntu / Debian. For a more recent build, use the nightly PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:joseluisblancoc/mrpt
sudo apt install libmrpt-dev mrpt-apps

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/MRPT/mrpt.git --recursive

Install build dependencies with rosdep (recommended, works even without ROS installed):

sudo apt install python3-rosdep
sudo rosdep init   # only once per machine
rosdep update
rosdep install --from-paths . --ignore-src -r -y

Then build with colcon:

colcon build

See the full build guide for colcon, CMake options, and dependency setup.

Windows

Nightly Windows installer — includes .exe, .dll, .h, and .lib files.

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Using MRPT 3.0 in your project

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)
project(my_robot_app)

find_package(mrpt_poses REQUIRED)
find_package(mrpt_maps  REQUIRED)

add_executable(my_app main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(my_app mrpt::mrpt_poses mrpt::mrpt_maps)

Migrating from MRPT 2.x? See the porting guide — package names changed from mrpt-<name> to mrpt_<name> and targets from mrpt::<name> to mrpt::mrpt_<name>.

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Documentation highlights

Resource	Link
Full API reference	docs.mrpt.org/reference/latest/modules.html
Tutorials	docs.mrpt.org/reference/latest/tutorials.html
Code examples	docs.mrpt.org/reference/latest/examples.html
Python examples	docs.mrpt.org/reference/latest/python_examples.html
GUI applications	docs.mrpt.org/reference/latest/applications.html
Supported sensors	docs.mrpt.org/reference/latest/supported-sensors.html
ROS wrappers	docs.mrpt.org/reference/latest/wrappers.html
Porting from 2.x	docs.mrpt.org/reference/latest/porting_mrpt3.html
Changelog	docs.mrpt.org/reference/latest/page_changelog.html
Robotics datasets	mrpt.org/robotics_datasets

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Modules

MRPT 3.0 is organized as independent colcon packages. Each can be built and used standalone:

mrpt_core · mrpt_math · mrpt_poses · mrpt_obs · mrpt_maps · mrpt_slam · mrpt_viz · mrpt_gui · mrpt_nav · mrpt_bayes · mrpt_graphs · mrpt_io · mrpt_img · mrpt_config · mrpt_serialization · mrpt_random · mrpt_system · mrpt_tfest · mrpt_kinematics · mrpt_comms · mrpt_hwdrivers · …

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Community & support

• Questions: Stack Overflow [mrpt] or mrpt-users mailing list
• Bugs / features: GitHub Issues
• Contributing: see CONTRIBUTING.md
• MOLA SLAM: MRPT is the core library of the MOLA modular SLAM framework

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License

Released under the BSD 3-Clause License.

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Contributors

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Packaging status