The robotics development community has long been dominated by the Robot Operating System (ROS), but discussions around its limitations and the emergence of alternatives like Basis are sparking important conversations about the future of robotics frameworks.
The ROS Legacy and Its Network Effect
The story of ROS's dominance isn't just about technical superiority. As revealed in community discussions, ROS gained its foothold when Willow Garage distributed PR2 robots to academic institutions worldwide. This strategic move created a powerful network effect, as these institutions developed compatible tools and libraries that were passed down through generations of PhD students.
Why ROS Remains Prevalent
Several key factors contribute to ROS's continued dominance:
- Comprehensive Tool Suite
- Built-in data logging (rosbag)
- Visualization tools (rviz)
- Transform (tf) package for coordinate transformations
- Extensive library of pre-built solutions
- Community Resources
- Large collection of ready-to-use packages
- Significant academic contributions
- Backwards compatibility support
The Case for Alternatives
Basis, a new robotics development framework, exemplifies the push for more production-focused solutions. Key differentiators include:
- Architecture Improvements
- Single-process by default with opt-in multi-process capability
- Deterministic testing support
- Simplified pub-sub implementation
- Support for modern serialization (Protobuf)
- Production Focus
- Better suited for deployment of safety-critical robots
- Emphasis on certainty over flexibility
- Support for CUDA handles within processes
- Integration with modern visualization tools like Foxglove
Industry Challenges and Future Needs
The community discussions highlight several crucial areas that modern robotics frameworks need to address:
- Fleet Management
- Support for hundreds of autonomous robots
- Inter-robot communication
- State and plan sharing
- Fleet health monitoring
- Network Reliability
- Handling unreliable networks
- Message compression
- Security and authentication
- API versioning and schema management
The Path Forward
While ROS maintains its position in academic and prototyping environments, the industry is clearly seeking more robust solutions for production deployments. Basis and similar frameworks are addressing these needs, though they acknowledge areas for improvement such as driver support, disconnection handling, and transport type safety.
The future of robotics frameworks appears to be heading toward a balance between the rapid prototyping capabilities that made ROS successful and the production-ready features that modern robotics applications demand.