CHOMP is a motion planner based on trajectory optimization. It generates smooth, collision-free trajectories. For technical, algorithmic details, please refer to: "CHOMP: Gradient Optimization Techniques for Efficient Motion Planning". Nathan Ratliff, Matthew Zucker, J. Andrew Bagnell and Siddhartha Srinivasa. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May 2009.
chomp_motion_planner implements the motion planning interface that the move_arm package requires. More details about this interface are available at: http://www.ros.org/wiki/move_arm. The tutorial on that page demonstrates how to get started using the entire motion planning stack. All it requires to use CHOMP is to launch the chomp_planner.launch instead of xxxx_yyyy_planner.launch.