MoveIt! provides great flexibility for switching the inverse kinematics algorithms using the robot plugins. Users can write their own IK solver as a MoveIt! plugin and switch from the default solver plugin whenever required. The default IK solver in MoveIt! is a numerical Jacobian-based solver.

Compared to the analytic solvers, the numerical solver can take more time to solve IK. The package called IKFast can be used to generate a C++ code for solving IK using analytical methods, which can be used for different kinds of robot manipulators and will perform better for six or fewer degrees of freedom. This C++ code can also be converted into the MoveIt! plugin by using some ROS tools.

Forward kinematics and finding jacobians are already integrated into the MoveIt! RobotState class, so we don't need to use plugins for solving FK.