ROS 2 / DDS · Embedded in hardware

The robot speaks ROS.
So should the hardware.

Olive devices join the ROS 2 graph from the moment they power on—publishing robot-ready data through a DDS-native communication layer, without a host-side driver stack standing in between.

Open interfaces · Robot-native topics · QoS at the source
olive®
native ROS node
/localizationstate estimation
/controllerreal-time control
/loggerrosbag / MCAP
/perceptionmultimodal fusion
/diagnosticshealth + status
0

host-side sensor drivers
required for the ROS path

ROS 2

topics, services and graph
behavior at device level

DDS

discovery, serialization,
transport and QoS

1 graph

from embedded sensing
to autonomy and fleet

Why it matters

Robots are distributed systems.

Sensors, compute and actuators are useful only when their data arrives with the semantics, timing and reliability the rest of the machine expects.

01 / DISCOVERY

Join the graph. Automatically.

ROS 2 nodes discover peers through the underlying middleware. A device can participate in the same distributed graph as localization, planning, visualization and logging—without a central ROS master.

02 / DATA CONTRACT

Publish meaning, not just bytes.

Standard ROS interfaces carry structured physical state: timestamps, units, frames, covariance, diagnostics and message types that the rest of the robotics ecosystem already understands.

03 / QUALITY OF SERVICE

Communication becomes part of system behavior.

DDS QoS lets reliability, history, durability, liveliness and timing expectations be chosen for the data path instead of being hard-coded into a proprietary transport.

04 / INTEROPERABILITY

Build on open middleware boundaries.

ROS 2 separates the client API from the underlying middleware through the RMW layer. That keeps application code above the transport and enables multiple standards-based middleware choices.

Inside the data path

From interrupt to ROS graph.

Olive co-designs acquisition, real-time execution and robot-native publication as one path. DDS is not a converter after the measurement; it is part of how the measurement leaves the device.

olive embedded stack publishing
physical
Sensor / actuator interfacesMEMS · camera · force · encoder · I/O
SOURCE
data plane
DMA + hardware abstractionAcquisition · buffer ownership · source timing
olixHAL
runtime
Real-time Linux executionScheduling · priorities · observability · synchronization
olixOS™
intelligence
Signal processing + Physical AIFusion · residual learning · diagnostics · confidence
olixAI™
robot API
ROS 2 client + message contractTopics · services · standard and custom interfaces
ROS 2
middleware
RMW + DDS / RTPSDiscovery · serialization · transport · QoS
DDS
network
Ethernet / USB Ethernet / PoERobot network · edge compute · workstation · fleet
LINK
Native

The ROS identity exists on the device.

The module is the publisher. The host receives the same topic interface it would receive from any other ROS 2 node.

Source-aware

Preserve context before it disappears.

Timestamping, health, covariance, confidence and diagnostics can be attached while local hardware state is still observable.

Distributed

One graph across the machine.

Move data directly to perception, control, logging or remote compute without inventing another sensor protocol first.

Less integration machinery

Remove the translation layer.

Traditional smart sensors often stop at a vendor protocol. The robot then needs a driver, parser, timestamp strategy, message converter and lifecycle story. Olive moves the ROS 2/DDS boundary into the hardware.

Conventional integration

Hardware first.
ROS later.

1Sensor firmwarevendor-specific
2Transport protocolcustom framing
3Host SDK / driverinstall + maintain
4Timestamp + conversionreconstruct context
5ROS wrapper nodefinally publish
Olive native path

Power on.
Join the graph.

1Acquire + source timestampdevice-local
2Process + attach contextat source
3Publish ROS 2 / DDSnative output
4Subscribe anywhererobot graph
DDS Quality of Service

Data should arrive the way the application needs it.

High-rate sensing, control state and diagnostics have different communication priorities. DDS exposes those choices as explicit QoS policies.

QoS inspector · example profiles
/imu/data compatible
ReliabilityBest effort
HistoryKeep last · 5
DurabilityVolatile
IntentFresh samples first

For a high-rate sensor stream, the newest sample can be more valuable than retransmitting an old one. This is an illustrative ROS 2/DDS profile, not a fixed product default.

QoS compatibility matters: ROS 2 publishers and subscriptions communicate only when their requested/offered policies are compatible.
Timing is part of the measurement

Know when the physical event happened.

A timestamp added late in a host driver describes software arrival. A timestamp created near acquisition can describe the physical sample. Olive keeps that distinction inside the data path.

Representative sensor → DDS path

Exact scheduling and transport depend on the product, configuration, message size, QoS and network. The architectural goal is simple: preserve source timing and make every stage observable.

t0
Physical samplesensor event
01
IRQ / DMAacquisition
02
Source timetimestamp domain
03
olixAI / fusionlocal processing
04
ROS publishmessage contract
05
DDS writenetwork data plane
app
rclcpp / rclpyrobot application and client-library API
core
rcl + ROS graphcommon client-library functionality
boundary
RMW interfaceROS middleware abstraction
data plane
DDS / DDSI-RTPSdiscovery · serialization · transport · QoS
eProsima
Fast DDS
Eclipse
Cyclone DDS
RTI
Connext DDS
Open middleware boundary

ROS above.
DDS below.

ROS 2 uses the RMW API to separate the robotics client stack from the underlying middleware. DDS/RTPS implementations can provide the distributed communication foundation beneath that boundary.

01
Distributed discovery

Nodes find other nodes in the same ROS domain through middleware discovery instead of relying on a central ROS 1-style master.

02
Runtime middleware choice

ROS 2 can support multiple RMW implementations, keeping the application layer less tightly coupled to one transport implementation.

03
Standards-based interoperability

DDSI-RTPS provides the wire protocol used by DDS implementations, giving robotics teams a standards-oriented foundation for networked data exchange.

Embedded Physical AI

Understand locally.
Publish openly.

The value of embedded intelligence grows when its output is easy to consume. Olive can transform high-rate physical signals locally, then publish raw data, fused state, confidence, events and diagnostics through the same robot-native interface.

Intelligence belongs close to the signal.

Keep timing, temperature, saturation, vibration and local dynamics visible to the model—then send the robot a cleaner, richer state instead of another proprietary byte stream.

01
Acquire

Raw physical signal + local context

source
02
Synchronize

Timestamp · align · validate

time
03
Understand

Fusion · AI residual · confidence

olixAI
04
Publish

ROS message + DDS QoS

ROS 2
05
Use anywhere

Control · autonomy · logging · fleet

graph
Developer experience

Use the tools you already know.

Once the hardware is on the graph, inspection, recording and integration use the normal ROS 2 workflow instead of a separate vendor toolchain.

ros2 topicros2 bagrviz2rqtMCAPC++ / Python
robot@olive · bash
ros2 topic list
/imu/data
/imu/mag
/diagnostics
/device/status
ros2 topic info -v /imu/data
Type: sensor_msgs/msg/Imu
Publisher count: 1
Subscription count: 3
ros2 bag record /imu/data /diagnostics
Recording...
ros2 topic echo /device/status --once
state: RUNNING
transport: DDS
From prototype to machine architecture

One communication model.
Across the robot.

The same ROS 2 graph model can connect sensing, interaction, autonomy and diagnostics—so teams spend less time maintaining glue code and more time building robot behavior.

S

Smart sensing

Publish motion, force, vision or machine-state data directly into the graph with source context and explicit QoS.

R

Robot integration

Connect controllers, localization, perception, logging and diagnostics through interfaces already native to the robotics software stack.

F

Fleet-ready architecture

Keep the device interface consistent as systems grow from a bench setup to multi-compute robots and larger deployments.

Middleware, transport and QoS capabilities depend on the selected ROS 2 distribution, RMW implementation, product firmware and network configuration.

Build on the graph.
Not around it.

Bring robot-native sensing and embedded intelligence into your next system with Olive ROS 2 / DDS hardware.

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