Wrapyfi: A Python Wrapper for Integrating Robots, Sensors, and Applications across Multiple Middleware

TL;DR

Wrapyfi is a Python wrapper that simplifies integrating various robotics middleware and deep learning frameworks, enabling cross-platform communication and distributed robot control.

Contribution

It introduces a unified Python interface supporting multiple middleware and deep learning plugins, easing multi-robot system development.

Findings

Supports ZeroMQ, YARP, ROS, ROS 2 middleware

Enables deep learning data exchange without extra encoding

Facilitates cross-machine robot control and workload sharing

Abstract

Message oriented and robotics middleware play an important role in facilitating robot control, abstracting complex functionality, and unifying communication patterns between sensors and devices. However, using multiple middleware frameworks presents a challenge in integrating different robots within a single system. To address this challenge, we present Wrapyfi, a Python wrapper supporting multiple message oriented and robotics middleware, including ZeroMQ, YARP, ROS, and ROS 2. Wrapyfi also provides plugins for exchanging deep learning framework data, without additional encoding or preprocessing steps. Using Wrapyfi eases the development of scripts that run on multiple machines, thereby enabling cross-platform communication and workload distribution. We finally present the three communication schemes that form the cornerstone of Wrapyfi's communication model, along with examples that demonstrate their applicability.