RSLCPP -- Deterministic Simulations Using ROS 2

TL;DR

This paper introduces RSLCPP, a C++ library that enables deterministic simulations in ROS 2, ensuring reproducible results across different hardware platforms for robotics applications.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel methodology and implementation for deterministic ROS 2 simulations without requiring code modifications, improving reproducibility in robotics testing.

Findings

Achieves identical simulation results across various CPUs and architectures.

Enables reproducible benchmarking and testing in robotics applications.

Open-sourced RSLCPP library available for community use.

Abstract

Simulation is crucial in real-world robotics, offering safe, scalable, and efficient environments for developing applications, ranging from humanoid robots to autonomous vehicles and drones. While the Robot Operating System (ROS) has been widely adopted as the backbone of these robotic applications in both academia and industry, its asynchronous, multiprocess design complicates reproducibility, especially across varying hardware platforms. Deterministic callback execution cannot be guaranteed when computation times and communication delays vary. This lack of reproducibility complicates scientific benchmarking and continuous integration, where consistent results are essential. To address this, we present a methodology to create deterministic simulations using ROS 2 nodes. Our ROS Simulation Library for C++ (RSLCPP) implements this approach, enabling existing nodes to be combined into a simulation routine that yields reproducible results without requiring any code changes. We demonstrate that our approach yields identical results across various CPUs and architectures when testing both a synthetic benchmark and a real-world robotics system. RSLCPP is open-sourced at https://github.com/TUMFTM/rslcpp.