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What does real-time performance mean for your robot?
Start with the behavior the application must deliver, not a benchmark number borrowed from another system. Write down the path you need to evaluate—for example, from a sensor publisher through the network and a subscriber callback to the control output—and define what successful operation means for that path.
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- Deadline: the latest acceptable time for the required work to complete.
- Jitter: how much the timing varies from one message or cycle to another.
- Rate and payload: the expected message frequency and message sizes.
- Loss behavior: whether a missed or delayed message is acceptable, and what the system should do when one occurs.
- Missed-deadline rule: the observable event that counts as failure, such as a control update arriving too late.
These are application requirements, not universal ROS 2 guarantees. ROS 2 documentation and tooling help characterize a system; they do not establish a deadline that every ROS 2 deployment will meet.
How do you measure ROS 2 message timing?
The ROS 2 Kilted Topic Statistics tutorial describes subscription statistics as a way to characterize performance and diagnose issues. It demonstrates message_age and message_period, with summary values for average, minimum, maximum, standard deviation, and sample count.
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- Message age helps show how old messages are when observed by the subscription.
- Message period helps show the timing between messages received by the subscription.
- Maximum and standard deviation can reveal timing excursions or variability that an average alone may obscure.
- Sample count gives context for how much data contributed to the summary.
These subscription metrics are useful signals, but they do not by themselves establish end-to-end control-loop latency or prove that a deadline was met. Measure the full path relevant to your requirement as well. The values shown in a tutorial run are illustrative output from that run, not expected performance for other hardware, applications, or network conditions.
How should you run a representative performance test?
- Choose the real path. Exercise the publishers, subscriptions, callbacks, and processes that participate in the behavior you care about rather than timing an isolated component and treating it as the whole system.
- Match the workload. Use the expected message types, sizes, rates, QoS, and deployment topology. Include realistic network conditions and CPU load.
- Collect timing and resource signals. Record message age and period summaries where applicable, along with CPU and memory use. Track whether the application’s defined deadline and loss requirements were met.
- Repeat comparable runs. Keep the workload and measurement method consistent when changing middleware or configuration. Record run duration and sample count so results can be interpreted in context.
- Change one relevant factor at a time. This makes it easier to tell whether a change in timing accompanies a middleware, QoS, executor, kernel, or workload difference.
A useful benchmark report records the ROS 2 distribution and version, RMW implementation, host and target hardware, kernel, executor and callback configuration, QoS profile, topology, message types and sizes, rate, CPU and memory use, test duration, and measurement method. This is a reproducibility checklist, not a claim that ROS 2 prescribes one benchmark format.
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- 10T High Performance Computing Power: RDK X5 Robotics Development Board is equipped with Sunrise 5 smart chip with integrated 10Tops BPU and 32GFlops GPU, which supports complex algorithms such as Transfomer, RWKVOccupancy, Stereoscopic Sensing, etc., accelerating autonomous decision-making and real-time control of robots.
- Fast Wireless Connectivity: RDK X5 Robotics Development Board is equipped with dual-band Wi-Fi6 (2.4/5GHz) and Bluetooth 5.4, onboard antenna + external extensions to ensure low-latency communication for industrial automation and smart home scenarios.
- Flexible Expansion of All Interfaces: RDK X5 Robotics Development Board is equipped with HDMI, USB3.0, 4-channel MIPI CSI/DSI, CAN bus and other interfaces that are compatible with sensors, cameras, and actuators to meet the needs of multimodal development.
- Industrial Grade Reliable Design: RDK X5 Robotics Development Board offers 4GB/8GB LPDDR4 memory options to meet the needs of different scenarios. The 4GB version is suitable for simple applications, while the 8GB version is suitable for more complex AI and robotics applications to ensure smooth system operation.
- WIKI: RDK X5: “developer.d-robotics.cc/en/documentation”. If you have any questions, please click “WayPonDEV Store” to leave us a message or contact us at wpd#youyeetoo&com (#→@ &→).
Which ROS 2 middleware should you benchmark?
ROS 2 supports multiple middleware implementations through RMW. The ROS 2 middleware overview lists Fast DDS, Cyclone DDS, RTI Connext, GurumDDS, and—beginning with Kilted—Zenoh. It describes Fast DDS as the default packaged implementation. These descriptions are not evidence that one option will be fastest for your workload.
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| Implementation | What the ROS 2 overview says | What to establish in your deployment |
|---|---|---|
| Fast DDS | Described as the default packaged implementation. | Measure timing, resource use, platform support, licensing, and behavior with your workload and ROS 2 version. |
| Cyclone DDS | Described as lighter and optimized for deterministic real-time communication. | Verify whether that documented positioning translates into the timing and resource results your application requires. |
| RTI Connext | Listed as a supported RMW implementation; the overview does not establish a workload-specific performance result. | Check licensing and platform availability, then benchmark the intended deployment. |
| GurumDDS | Listed as a supported RMW implementation; the overview does not establish a workload-specific performance result. | Check licensing and platform availability, then benchmark the intended deployment. |
| Zenoh | Available beginning with Kilted; described as designed for IoT and edge situations, emphasizing high throughput, low latency, and interoperability across heterogeneous environments. | Test the actual topology, throughput, timing, and interoperability requirements rather than assuming the design emphasis guarantees a result. |
The overview identifies licensing, platform availability, resource utilization, and computation footprint as selection factors. Add your QoS needs and measured latency and throughput on the target workload. DDS implementations can communicate with one another in many cases, but interoperability is not guaranteed in every combination. For a distributed deployment, a consistent ROS version and RMW is the safer starting point unless the intended combination has been tested.
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How can you investigate jitter or missed deadlines?
Use the measurements to narrow down where timing changes occur, then test one part of the deployment at a time. The performance_test documentation lists utilities for CPU usage tracking, memory checking, real-time enabling, and timestamps. The rcl quality declaration says performance analysis is conducted per release, rather than per change, and points to system-level benchmarks; release-level analysis is not a substitute for measuring your own application.
- Confirm the symptom. Compare message age and period summaries with the application’s deadline and loss criteria. Do not treat a good average as proof that worst-case behavior is acceptable.
- Check resource use. Use CPU and memory measurements to see whether timing changes coincide with resource pressure.
- Isolate the configuration. Compare the same workload while varying a relevant factor such as RMW, QoS, executor and callback configuration, or deployment topology. Keep the other recorded conditions stable.
- Measure the full path again. A local timing improvement is useful only if the application’s end-to-end requirement also improves without unacceptable loss or resource costs.
The Kilted documentation index also points to material on real-time programming, tracing, DDS tuning, executors, QoS, and a real-time Linux kernel build. Those topics can guide further investigation, but configuration choices should be checked against the documentation for the ROS 2 distribution and platform you actually deploy.
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How should you report a ROS 2 performance result?
Present the result as a property of a specific test, not as a general ROS 2 capability. Include the configuration record and state the workload, measurement method, timing summaries, resource use, and whether the application’s defined deadline and loss requirements were satisfied. A result without its hardware, software, middleware, and test conditions cannot reliably guide another deployment.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchThe ROS 2 Kilted Topic Statistics tutorial and middleware overview, along with Jazzy package documentation for performance utilities, describe ways to measure and compare systems; they do not provide a generalizable real-time benchmark figure. Verify version-sensitive middleware and tooling details in the official documentation for your selected distribution before applying them to a deployment.
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