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RoboKube: Establishing a New Foundation for the Cloud Native Evolution in Robotics

Yu Liu, Aitor Hernandez Herranz, Roberto C. Sundin

TL;DR

This paper addresses the gap between cloud-native technologies and ROS-powered robotics by introducing RoboKube, a Kubernetes-based framework designed to deploy cloudified ROS 2 applications across the device-edge-cloud continuum. It provides a platform-agnostic orchestration approach, with careful attention to networking overlays, multicast support, and practical deployment considerations using K3s, Kube-ovn, and Ingress. The authors detail containerization and deployment best practices, including DockerSlim for compact images and Helm for scalable management, and illustrate the approach through a teleoperation case study with a UR5 robot. The work aims to enable cross-network robot-cloud interactions and scalable ROS node distribution, offering concrete guidance to researchers and practitioners to accelerate the cloud-native evolution in robotics.

Abstract

Cloud native technologies have been observed to expand into the realm of Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-physical Systems, of which an important application domain is robotics. In this paper, we review the cloudification practice in the robotics domain from both literature and industrial perspectives. We propose RoboKube, an adaptive framework that is based on the Kubernetes (K8s) ecosystem to set up a common platform across the device-cloud continuum for the deployment of cloudified Robotic Operating System (ROS) powered applications, to facilitate the cloud native evolution in robotics. We examine the process of modernizing ROS applications using cloud-native technologies, focusing on both the platform and application perspectives. In addition, we address the challenges of networking setups for heterogeneous environments. This paper intends to serves as a guide for developers and researchers, offering insights into containerization strategies, ROS node distribution and clustering, and deployment options. To demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, we present a case study involving the cloudification of a teleoperation testbed.

RoboKube: Establishing a New Foundation for the Cloud Native Evolution in Robotics

TL;DR

This paper addresses the gap between cloud-native technologies and ROS-powered robotics by introducing RoboKube, a Kubernetes-based framework designed to deploy cloudified ROS 2 applications across the device-edge-cloud continuum. It provides a platform-agnostic orchestration approach, with careful attention to networking overlays, multicast support, and practical deployment considerations using K3s, Kube-ovn, and Ingress. The authors detail containerization and deployment best practices, including DockerSlim for compact images and Helm for scalable management, and illustrate the approach through a teleoperation case study with a UR5 robot. The work aims to enable cross-network robot-cloud interactions and scalable ROS node distribution, offering concrete guidance to researchers and practitioners to accelerate the cloud-native evolution in robotics.

Abstract

Cloud native technologies have been observed to expand into the realm of Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-physical Systems, of which an important application domain is robotics. In this paper, we review the cloudification practice in the robotics domain from both literature and industrial perspectives. We propose RoboKube, an adaptive framework that is based on the Kubernetes (K8s) ecosystem to set up a common platform across the device-cloud continuum for the deployment of cloudified Robotic Operating System (ROS) powered applications, to facilitate the cloud native evolution in robotics. We examine the process of modernizing ROS applications using cloud-native technologies, focusing on both the platform and application perspectives. In addition, we address the challenges of networking setups for heterogeneous environments. This paper intends to serves as a guide for developers and researchers, offering insights into containerization strategies, ROS node distribution and clustering, and deployment options. To demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, we present a case study involving the cloudification of a teleoperation testbed.
Paper Structure (21 sections, 3 figures)

This paper contains 21 sections, 3 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Background
  2. Cloudification practice in ROS
  3. Literature
  4. Industry
  5. RoboKube: a platform perspective
  6. Orchestration platform
  7. Networking
  8. Network backend alternatives
  9. Ingress and NodePort
  10. Other network considerations
  11. RoboKube: an application perspective
  12. Containerization of ROS 2 nodes
  13. Deployment
  14. Distribution and clustering of ROS nodes
  15. Case study: RoboKube-powered teleoperation testbed
  16. ...and 6 more sections

Figures (3)

  • Figure 1: A common platform across the device-edge-cloud continuum is the cloud native approach to address the network heterogeneity issue.
  • Figure 2: The high-level architecture of the teleoperation testbed.
  • Figure 3: The ROS 2 architecture, where ellipses denote ROS nodes and rectangles denote ROS topics. Each ROS node except joy can be distributed and run on an arbitrary Kubernetes node in the cluster.