SymForce
A symbolic computation and code-generation library for robotics that compiles symbolic math into fast C++ (or other target-language) code and provides a tangent-space nonlinear optimizer for problems such as SLAM, calibration and motion planning.
SymForce combines the flexibility of symbolic mathematics, built on the SymPy API with geometric and camera types, Lie-group calculus and singularity handling, with a code generator that turns symbolic expressions into fast, branchless, dependency-light code for C++ or another target language. Its optimization library is a fast tangent-space nonlinear optimizer based on factor graphs, and generated functions plug directly into it as factors.
Because it computes tangent-space Jacobians automatically, it removes the need for handwritten, bug-prone derivatives, and its authors report yielding 10x speedups over standard autodiff by flattening computation and exploiting sparsity. It generates embedded-friendly, templated Eigen C++ code with zero dynamic memory allocation.
SymForce is developed and maintained by Skydio and used in production for tasks like SLAM, bundle adjustment, calibration and sparse nonlinear MPC in autonomous robots; it was published at RSS 2022 and installs via pip.