Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

Service Discovery-Based Hybrid Network Middleware for Efficient Communication in Distributed Robotic Systems

Shiyao Sang, Yinggang Ling

Abstract

Robotic middleware is fundamental to ensuring reliable communication among system components and is crucial for intelligent robotics, autonomous vehicles, and smart manufacturing. However, existing robotic middleware often struggles to meet the diverse communication demands, optimize data transmission efficiency, and maintain scheduling determinism between Orin computing units in large-scale L4 autonomous vehicle deployments. This paper presents RIMAOS2C, a service discovery-based hybrid network communication middleware designed to tackle these challenges. By leveraging multi-level service discovery multicast, RIMAOS2C supports a wide variety of communication modes, including multiple cross-chip Ethernet protocols and PCIe communication capabilities. Its core mechanism, the Message Bridge, optimizes data flow forwarding and employs shared memory for centralized message distribution, reducing message redundancy and minimizing transmission delay uncertainty. Tested on L4 vehicles and Jetson Orin domain controllers, RIMAOS2C leverages TCP-based ZeroMQ to overcome the large-message transmission bottleneck in native CyberRT. In scenarios with two cross-chip subscribers, it eliminates message redundancy and improves large-data transmission efficiency by 36 to 40 percent while reducing callback latency variation by 42 to 906 percent. This research advances the communication capabilities of robotic operating systems and proposes a novel approach to optimizing communication in distributed computing architectures for autonomous driving.

Service Discovery-Based Hybrid Network Middleware for Efficient Communication in Distributed Robotic Systems

Abstract

Robotic middleware is fundamental to ensuring reliable communication among system components and is crucial for intelligent robotics, autonomous vehicles, and smart manufacturing. However, existing robotic middleware often struggles to meet the diverse communication demands, optimize data transmission efficiency, and maintain scheduling determinism between Orin computing units in large-scale L4 autonomous vehicle deployments. This paper presents RIMAOS2C, a service discovery-based hybrid network communication middleware designed to tackle these challenges. By leveraging multi-level service discovery multicast, RIMAOS2C supports a wide variety of communication modes, including multiple cross-chip Ethernet protocols and PCIe communication capabilities. Its core mechanism, the Message Bridge, optimizes data flow forwarding and employs shared memory for centralized message distribution, reducing message redundancy and minimizing transmission delay uncertainty. Tested on L4 vehicles and Jetson Orin domain controllers, RIMAOS2C leverages TCP-based ZeroMQ to overcome the large-message transmission bottleneck in native CyberRT. In scenarios with two cross-chip subscribers, it eliminates message redundancy and improves large-data transmission efficiency by 36 to 40 percent while reducing callback latency variation by 42 to 906 percent. This research advances the communication capabilities of robotic operating systems and proposes a novel approach to optimizing communication in distributed computing architectures for autonomous driving.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 15 sections, 3 equations, 8 figures, 3 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. INTRODUCTION
  2. Related Work
  3. SYSTEM DESIGN
  4. Distributed Computing Architecture
  5. RIMAOS2C Middleware Design
  6. Service Discovery
  7. Message Bridge
  8. EVALUATION
  9. Latency Evaluation Across Various Communication Modes
  10. Performance Comparison: RIMAOS2C vs. CyberRT
  11. Latency Comparison
  12. Inner-Orin Message Transmission Efficiency Comparison
  13. Scheduling Stability Across Different Load Conditions
  14. Feature Comparison: RIMAOS2C and Other Middleware Systems
  15. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

Figures (8)

  • Figure 2: Comparsion of Traditional Industrial Computer and Apollo CyberRT SolutionApolloAutoApolloOpen vs. Proposed Domain Controller and Chery RIMAOS2C Solution
  • Figure 3: The L4 autonomous driving distributed computing architecture, integrated with the RIMAOS2C robotic middleware, provides flexible deployment and computational scalability. This architecture employs four Orin computing units working in unison to execute key functions, including LiDAR perception, visual perception, localization, planning, control, and data acquisition.
  • Figure 4: RIMAOS2C Software Architecture Diagram
  • Figure 5: RIMAOS2C Communication Design Diagram
  • Figure 6: Multi-level Service Discovery Diagram. Small messages (e.g., localization data) and large messages (e.g., image data) are separated into different discovery networks, enabling the use of distinct communication methods within the framework without encountering topic conflicts caused by automatic service discovery.
  • ...and 3 more figures