Evaluation of the Robot Operating System 2 in Lossy Unmanned Networks

The Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) is an open source middleware used for robotic applications. ROS 2 provides extensive security enhancements and quality of service (QoS) profiles not available in ROS 1. This paper studies the performance of ROS 2 in a small network of nodes, similar to how a group of unmanned assets would operate. Specifically, we analyze ROS 2 under varying QoS and security constraints in a wireless, lossy environment. This is the first work to comprehensively study ROS 2 network performance using QoS and security classification as a function of network scale in an environment that uses Wi-Fi communications. We custom build a simulation architecture that integrates ROS 2 with NS-3, an open source network simulator. Network performance metrics include latency and message drop rate. We show that enabling security results in a higher message drop rate across all QoS profiles. We also show that scaling the network to more nodes results in various consequences with the use of different QoS settings, including an increase in the average latency of messages. We also highlight some of the limitations there were observed with NS-3 and ROS 2.