A Comparative Study on ROS2 Middleware - Performance Aspects within ADAS Simulation Platforms

An autonomous vehicle is able to perceive and interpret exactly its surroundings and its interior (“Sensing”). then, it processes the information received and plan its driving strategy (“processing”). And finally, it uses its powertrain, steering and braking power to move its wheels in such a way that the planned driving strategy is put into practice (“Acting”). Testing an autonomous vehicle’s reaction to the erratic traffic scenarios using prototypes would be impractical. Physically testing these scenarios can also be risky to human life and equipment. Additionally, the repetition involved in the comprehensive testing of all these scenarios could lead to human errors. Various Self Driving car manufacturers have reported injuries and causalities while doing Functional testing [1]. Testing autonomous vehicles with simulations can model faulty sensors to determine whether the autonomous vehicle is functionally safe and also provides the comprehensive test coverage by saving time to market and also the cost. Hence a Virtual Simulation Platforms are needed. ROS 2 (Robot Operating System 2) is an open-source software development kit for robotics applications which is specifically built to allow for plug and play packages independent of the software stack. The purpose of ROS2 is to offer a standard software platform to developers across industries that will carry them from research and prototyping through to deployment and production. This Open-source ROS has been growing exponentially [2]. In ADAS simulation Environments like SIL, HIL, PIL that are based on ROS2 using rmw_fastrtps as Abstract DDS layer, it just isn’t fast enough and less reliable also. Hence there is need for a reliable and low latency communication protocol at the ROS2 middleware. This paper presents a comparative study between ROS2 Abstract layers like rmw_fastrtps and ecal_rmw with respect to reliability and latency aspects.