  This paper introduces PyRobot, an open-source robotics framework for research
and benchmarking. PyRobot is a light-weight, high-level interface on top of ROS
that provides a consistent set of hardware independent mid-level APIs to
control different robots. PyRobot abstracts away details about low-level
controllers and inter-process communication, and allows non-robotics
researchers (ML, CV researchers) to focus on building high-level AI
applications. PyRobot aims to provide a research ecosystem with convenient
access to robotics datasets, algorithm implementations and models that can be
used to quickly create a state-of-the-art baseline. We believe PyRobot, when
paired up with low-cost robot platforms such as LoCoBot, will reduce the entry
barrier into robotics, and democratize robotics. PyRobot is open-source, and
can be accessed via https://pyrobot.org.
