Software & Middleware

Middleware

Middleware is the software layer that handles communication and coordination between distributed components of a robot system, providing message passing, discovery, serialization, and quality-of-service management so that perception, planning, and control modules can interoperate. ROS 2, built atop DDS implementations, is the dominant robotics middleware; alternatives and complements include Zenoh, ZeroMQ-based stacks, and proprietary frameworks in industrial and automotive systems.

Why it matters for physical AI

Middleware choices dictate latency, determinism, and composability across a robot's software; they are also where learned policy nodes plug into the same graph as drivers, estimators, and safety monitors.