A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Comparison of Middlewares in Edge-to-Edge and Edge-to-Cloud Communication for Distributed ROS 2 Systems
Authors: Zhang, Jiaqiang; Yu, Xianjia; Ha, Sier; Peña Queralta, Jorge; Westerlund, Tomi
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Publishing place: DORDRECHT
Publication year: 2024
Journal: Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems
Journal name in source: Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems
Journal acronym: J INTELL ROBOT SYST
Article number: 162
Volume: 110
Issue: 4
Number of pages: 12
ISSN: 0921-0296
eISSN: 1573-0409
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-024-02187-z
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10846-024-02187-z
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/477052353
The increased data transmission and number of devices involved in communications among distributed systems make it challenging yet significantly necessary to have an efficient and reliable networking middleware. In robotics and autonomous systems, the wide application of ROS 2 brings the possibility of utilizing various networking middlewares together with DDS in ROS 2 for better communication among edge devices or between edge devices and the cloud. However, there is a lack of comprehensive communication performance comparison of integrating these networking middlewares with ROS 2. In this study, we provide a quantitative analysis for the communication performance of utilized networking middlewares including MQTT and Zenoh alongside DDS in ROS 2 among a multiple host system. For a complete and reliable comparison, we calculate the latency and throughput of these middlewares by sending distinct amounts and types of data through different network setups including Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and 4G. To further extend the evaluation to real-world application scenarios, we assess the drift error (the position changes) over time caused by these networking middlewares with the robot moving in an identical square-shaped path. Our results show that CycloneDDS performs better under Ethernet while Zenoh performs better under Wi-Fi and 4G. In the actual robot test, the robot moving trajectory drift error over time (96 s) via Zenoh is the smallest. It is worth noting we have a discussion of the CPU utilization of these networking middlewares and the perfosrmance impact caused by enabling the security feature in ROS 2 at the end of the paper.
Downloadable publication This is an electronic reprint of the original article. |  |
Funding information in the publication:
Open Access funding provided by University of Turku (including Turku University Central Hospital). The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
