CRTK (Collaborative Robotics Toolkit)

CRTK (Collaborative Robotics Toolkit) is an open-source convention and software framework used in the robotics industry, particularly for medical and research applications like the Raven II and da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK). Rather than being a physical product manufactured in a single factory, it is a collaborative software standard designed to unify command names and payloads across different robotic systems.

The brand and project originated from academic and research environments, primarily involving institutions like Johns Hopkins University and the University of Washington. It serves as a middle-layer protocol that facilitates communication between robot platforms and controllers, such as the Robot Operating System (ROS). Because it is an open-source initiative, its development is distributed globally across various research centers and universities.