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Dev tools · May 24, 2022

SF

SymForce – Fast symbolic computation, code generation, and optimization

Author here. I’m unreasonably excited to share this library that we’re open-sourcing today — our team has been building it for five years and these ideas have been a passion of mine for fifteen. SymForce is a library that makes it easy to code a problem once in Python with an augmented SymPy API (backed by C++), experiment with it symbolically, generate optimized code in C++ or any backend language, and then run highly efficient nonlinear optimization problems based on the original problem definition. This workflow elegantly solves a wide variety of tasks in robotics and related domains, and…

In plain words

SymForce is a Python library for symbolic computation and code generation that helps developers define optimization problems once and generate efficient C++ or other backend code. Built on an augmented SymPy API with C++ backing, it enables experimentation with symbolic math and produces highly optimized nonlinear solvers. Designed primarily for robotics and related fields, SymForce aims to speed up common tasks significantly while reducing handwritten code and potential bugs.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

In the maker’s words, at launch

Author here. I’m unreasonably excited to share this library that we’re open-sourcing today — our team has been building it for five years and these ideas have been a passion of mine for fifteen. SymForce is a library that makes it easy to code a problem once in Python with an augmented SymPy API (backed by C++), experiment with it symbolically, generate optimized code in C++ or any backend language, and then run highly efficient nonlinear optimization problems based on the original problem definition. This workflow elegantly solves a wide variety of tasks in robotics and related domains, and can speed up common tasks by an order of magnitude while requiring less handwritten code and reducing the surface area for bugs. See our paper at https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.07889 for experiments (accepted to RSS 2022). We developed it at Skydio for real-time robotics algorithms like SLAM, calibration, bundle adjustment, MPC, and system identification on our drones. It’s a key pillar of our autonomy stack that has accelerated our iteration cycle from prototypes to production systems. We are releasing it to benefit the open-source community, and think its components are useful to anyone writing algorithmic code, like students, research teams, and tech companies. You can pip install it, play around with a formulation in a notebook, and deploy production code in a couple of hours. Try it at https://github.com/symforce-org/symforce

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