I'd love to use something other than ROS2, if for no other reason than to get rid of the dependency hell and the convoluted build system.
But there are a lot of nodes and drivers out there for ROS already. It's a chicken and egg thing because people aren't going to write drivers unless there are enough users, and it's hard to get users without drivers.
It looks like their business model is to give away the OS and make money with FoxGlove-like tools. It's not a bad idea, but adoption will be an uphill battle. And since they aren't open source yet, I certainly wouldn't start using it on a project until it us.
Hey, good points, we have plans to create a ROS2 bridge in the near future. We definitely won't be able to catch up with huge ecosystem that ROS2 has created over the years but we will rewrite the annoying parts, that's for sure.
I've got one of these! Mine is called 'roboflex' (github.com/flexrobotics). It's c++/python, not rust. But similarly born out of frustration with ros. Writing your own robotics middleware seems to be a rite of passage. Just like 'writing your own game engine'. Nothing wrong with that - ros is powerful but has legit problems, and we need alternatives.
Although tbh, these days I'm questioning the utility. If I'm the one writing the robot code, then I care a lot about the ergonomics of the libraries or frameworks. But if LLMs are writing it, do I really care? That's a genuine, not rhetorical question. I suppose ergonomics still matter (and maybe matter even more) if I'm the one that has to check all the LLM code....
I will admit I have almost always made the choice to not use ros2. I am trying to use it now for some work, and I can see where/when it would be useful...
But I almost always feel like there is just so much STUFF involved in ros, that really is just better resolved by having really robust controllers, well defined protocols, and everything else.
I wait to pass judgement until I have more information though
Our goal is to make all of this super easy with the installation of a single script. We're also working on a SaaS in parallel which will allow you to fire up the whole stack in your browser, 0 setup required (you pick the robot you want and it runs in a sim in your browser). Then, when you're satisfied with the result you just run a bash script on your Jetson board and everything will work the same on your real robot.
It looks like this is cleaner and simpler than ROS 2, and the API seems nice, but it would be really difficult to diverge from the standard and use an ecosystem with a very small community and no momentum behind it. Does this have any compelling selling points to convince someone to switch other than 'less overhead than ROS 2'?
I'm not trying to downplay that selling point at all. My experience with ROS 2 is limited but that aspect of it was miserable.
This is such a small nit, but landing at the docs page (https://docs.peppy.bot/) and seeing this splash is annoying to me. Just show the docs.
Also it would be nice if I could switch between Rust and Python examples and have all code panes respect that choice, rather than have to switch every pane to Rust.
One of the only ways I can imagine that would _somehow add even more complexity_ to the disaster that is ROS/ROS2, is to try and make rust a first-class citizen.
You're using ROS2, so you have a problem. You want to add rust to fix it? Now you have 47 problems.
Hey uh - good luck. I spent a while smashing my head against this.
You should read https://basisrobotics.tech/2025/01/08/postmortem/ and consider:
- How you will get users
- How you will fund development
- What the "good parts" from ROS and other frameworks you want to take
I notice you don't have shared memory transport, nor do you support runtime composability (I think?). This might make perception heavy stacks run poorly. I'm also a little confused on what serialization format you support - is it an entirely custom one? It looks like two publishers with the same topic type will duplicate the schema, which is a bit odd. Worth also considering how you will do recording/replay.
Additionally - BSL feels great, but I found it scared off some people. IMO just do Apache 2.0 if you're going to have some other revenue stream anyhow.
I spent like...a year thinking about this stuff, happy to chat at kyle@basisrobotics.tech if you need a friendly ear.
I was sad to see you guys shut down - I think you were on to something with deterministic faster-than-realtime replay. Not surprised it was hard to find paying customers, but for what it's worth, my engineering self thought that you guys were solving the right problem. As far as I can tell, it's still not solved, and the shocking truth is that everyone is just Living That Way.
The other thing that is important is how to provide a more query-like interface to tease out the data you actually want your node to react to, yet in a way that will be deterministic. You need to guide users away from introducing non-determinism, which can be tricky because innocent things like a message buffer with a max size can lead to such situations.
I have talked with one of the key people at Xronos (https://www.xronos.com/), who are trying to attack related problems. Still, even they aren't quite as pre-occupied with _replay_, which is crucial.
I think the sad truth is that the second evolution of all this frameworking simply hasn't come together convincingly enough, and in one place, for it to gather momentum. It turned out to be hard. And now that it has taken too long, it's my bet that ROS2 and all of its imitators will get lapped by holistic deep approaches. Not the stupid stuff happening with these fake humanoid robot companies mind you, but still - something holistic and deep. Something coming out of the predictive coding research e.g., or world models, etc. Training in simulated environments with generative systems is going to lead to behavior so much more sophisticated than gluing together all of our little services. Roboticists have their own version of the bitter lesson coming soon.
Hey,
too bad you've shut down, looked like a great project.
> I notice you don't have shared memory transport, nor do you support runtime composability (I think?)
We're using Zenoh in the backend, we didn't try to reinvent the wheel on that front.
> I'm also a little confused on what serialization format you support - is it an entirely custom one?
It's cap'n proto, but abstracted away for the user so he doesn't have to think about it.
> BSL feels great, but I found it scared off some people
Agreed, but we're building a SaaS in parallel, PeppyOS will be 100% free and open source but we don't want another company to build a SaaS on top of it, that will be the only restriction of the BSL license, otherwise it's the same as Apache 2.0.
19 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 43.0 ms ] threadThe website claims “30hz polling rate”, “2ms latency”. Not sure if that is a best case or just for that demo.
This is just example cases but in fact it can go as high as you want as long as your hardware allows it
But there are a lot of nodes and drivers out there for ROS already. It's a chicken and egg thing because people aren't going to write drivers unless there are enough users, and it's hard to get users without drivers.
It looks like their business model is to give away the OS and make money with FoxGlove-like tools. It's not a bad idea, but adoption will be an uphill battle. And since they aren't open source yet, I certainly wouldn't start using it on a project until it us.
Although tbh, these days I'm questioning the utility. If I'm the one writing the robot code, then I care a lot about the ergonomics of the libraries or frameworks. But if LLMs are writing it, do I really care? That's a genuine, not rhetorical question. I suppose ergonomics still matter (and maybe matter even more) if I'm the one that has to check all the LLM code....
But I almost always feel like there is just so much STUFF involved in ros, that really is just better resolved by having really robust controllers, well defined protocols, and everything else.
I wait to pass judgement until I have more information though
I'm not trying to downplay that selling point at all. My experience with ROS 2 is limited but that aspect of it was miserable.
This is such a small nit, but landing at the docs page (https://docs.peppy.bot/) and seeing this splash is annoying to me. Just show the docs.
Also it would be nice if I could switch between Rust and Python examples and have all code panes respect that choice, rather than have to switch every pane to Rust.
At the moment it's pretty raw, but we'll eventually turn it into a "no fuss entry into robotics".
You're using ROS2, so you have a problem. You want to add rust to fix it? Now you have 47 problems.
You should read https://basisrobotics.tech/2025/01/08/postmortem/ and consider: - How you will get users - How you will fund development - What the "good parts" from ROS and other frameworks you want to take
I notice you don't have shared memory transport, nor do you support runtime composability (I think?). This might make perception heavy stacks run poorly. I'm also a little confused on what serialization format you support - is it an entirely custom one? It looks like two publishers with the same topic type will duplicate the schema, which is a bit odd. Worth also considering how you will do recording/replay.
Additionally - BSL feels great, but I found it scared off some people. IMO just do Apache 2.0 if you're going to have some other revenue stream anyhow.
I spent like...a year thinking about this stuff, happy to chat at kyle@basisrobotics.tech if you need a friendly ear.
The other thing that is important is how to provide a more query-like interface to tease out the data you actually want your node to react to, yet in a way that will be deterministic. You need to guide users away from introducing non-determinism, which can be tricky because innocent things like a message buffer with a max size can lead to such situations.
I have talked with one of the key people at Xronos (https://www.xronos.com/), who are trying to attack related problems. Still, even they aren't quite as pre-occupied with _replay_, which is crucial.
I think the sad truth is that the second evolution of all this frameworking simply hasn't come together convincingly enough, and in one place, for it to gather momentum. It turned out to be hard. And now that it has taken too long, it's my bet that ROS2 and all of its imitators will get lapped by holistic deep approaches. Not the stupid stuff happening with these fake humanoid robot companies mind you, but still - something holistic and deep. Something coming out of the predictive coding research e.g., or world models, etc. Training in simulated environments with generative systems is going to lead to behavior so much more sophisticated than gluing together all of our little services. Roboticists have their own version of the bitter lesson coming soon.
> I notice you don't have shared memory transport, nor do you support runtime composability (I think?)
We're using Zenoh in the backend, we didn't try to reinvent the wheel on that front.
> I'm also a little confused on what serialization format you support - is it an entirely custom one?
It's cap'n proto, but abstracted away for the user so he doesn't have to think about it.
> BSL feels great, but I found it scared off some people
Agreed, but we're building a SaaS in parallel, PeppyOS will be 100% free and open source but we don't want another company to build a SaaS on top of it, that will be the only restriction of the BSL license, otherwise it's the same as Apache 2.0.