SE3Kit: A Lightweight Python Library for Specialized Geometric Primitives in Robotics
For robotics developers and educators, SE3Kit provides a lightweight, mathematically rigorous alternative to existing libraries, though it is an incremental contribution.
SE3Kit is a lightweight Python library for SE(3) and SO(3) operations that fills the gap between heavy robotics frameworks and general-purpose tools, offering a pure-Python, NumPy-only implementation for embedded deployment, rapid prototyping, and education.
The Python robotics ecosystem faces a challenge: while many libraries exist for rigid body transformations, few are both lightweight and mathematically strict. This paper introduces SE3Kit, a lightweight Python library efficient operations on the Special Euclidean Group SE(3) and the Special Orthogonal Group SO(3). Unlike established frameworks that require heavy dependencies (e.g., SpatialMath, PyPose) or general tools that lack robotics-specific features (e.g., SciPy), SE3Kit targets the gap between these extremes. It is designed for embedded deployment, rapid prototyping, and education while providing rigorous mathematical implementation. It provides a pure-Python, NumPy-only implementation of Lie Group operations, without the overhead of deep learning or other visualization software.