ROS-2 is a deterministic effort toward improving the communication network framework that will be used with real-time systems and production-ready solutions. ROS-2 aims to do the following:
- Provide secure communication between components
- Communicate in real time
- Connect multiple robots with ease
- Improve the quality of communication irrespective of the communication medium
- Provide an ROS layer directly onto hardware, such as sensors and embedded boards
- Use the latest software improvements
Remember the ROS equation diagram from the previous chapter? ROS-2 follows the exact same equation but in a different manner:
ROS-2 follows an industrial standard and implements real-time communication through a concept called DDS implementation. DDS (short for Data Distributed Services) is a proven industry standard by Object Management Groups (OMGs) and it is implemented by many vendors such as RTI's implementation, called Connext (https://www.rti.com/products/), ADLink's implementation, called OpenSplice RTPS (https://github.com/ADLINK-IST/opensplice), and eProsima's implementation, called Fast RTPS (http://www.eprosima.com/index.php/products-all/eprosima-fast-rtps).
These standards are used in time-critical applications such as airline systems, hospitals, financial services, and space exploration systems. This implementation aims to simplify the plumbing strategy (the publish-subscribe infrastructure) and make it deterministic across different hardware and software components. This ensures that the user can concentrate on the capabilities and ecosystem more.