Repository Summary

Description A ROS 2-Compatible Middleware Enabling True Zero-Copy IPC for all ROS Message Types including Unsized Ones.
Checkout URI https://github.com/tier4/agnocast.git
VCS Type git
VCS Version main
Last Updated 2025-09-24
Dev Status UNKNOWN
Released UNRELEASED
Tags middleware zero-copy pubsub inter-process-communication ros2
Contributing Help Wanted (-)
Good First Issues (-)
Pull Requests to Review (-)

README

ROS 2 Agnocast

A ROS 2-Compatible Middleware Enabling True Zero-Copy IPC for all ROS Message Types including Unsized Ones.

This middleware is based on the following paper and the corresponding prototype. The paper has been accepted to IEEE ISORC 2025, but only the preprint version (pdf) is available at this stage.

  • T. Ishikawa-Aso and S. Kato, “ROS 2 Agnocast: Supporting Unsized Message Types for True Zero-Copy Publish/Subscribe IPC”, arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.16882, 2025.
BibTeX ```bibtex @article{ishikawa2025agnocast, title={ROS 2 Agnocast: Supporting Unsized Message Types for True Zero-Copy Publish/Subscribe IPC}, author={Ishikawa-Aso, Takahiro and Kato, Shinpei}, journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.16882}, year={2025} } ```

Supported Environments

Agnocast is currently available in the following environments. This reflects the current status, and support is expected to expand in the future.

Category Supported Versions / Notes
ROS 2 Humble (only with rclcpp client library)
Linux Distribution Ubuntu 22.04 (Jammy Jellyfish)
Linux Kernel 5.x / 6.x series (detailed version matrix not yet available)

Build

Setup.

bash scripts/setup

Build.

colcon build --symlink-install --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

Run

Insert kernel module.

sudo modprobe agnocast

Run sample app (different window for each script). The order does not matter.

bash scripts/run_listener
bash scripts/run_talker

Stop applications and unload kernel module.

sudo modprobe -r agnocast

Debug

Check the kernel log.

sudo dmesg -w

To use dynamic_debug for dynamically outputting debug logs, please run the following command as super user:

sudo su
echo 'file agnocast_main.c +p' > /sys/kernel/debug/dynamic_debug/control

Check if dynamic_debug is enabled by running the following command. If the right side of the = is p, it is enabled. (If it’s _, it is disabled.)

sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/dynamic_debug/control | grep "agnocast_main.c"
/.../agnocast/agnocast_kmod/agnocast_main.c:810 [agnocast]release_msgs_to_meet_depth =p "Release oldest message in the publisher_queue (publisher_pid=%d) of the topic (topic_name=%s) with qos_depth %d. (release_msgs_to_meet_depth)\012"
/.../agnocast/agnocast_kmod/agnocast_main.c:367 [agnocast]insert_message_entry =p "Insert an entry (topic_name=%s publisher_pid=%d msg_virtual_address=%lld timestamp=%lld). (insert_message_entry)"

To use dynamic_debug, the Linux kernel configuration must have CONFIG_DYNAMIC_DEBUG set to y. If CONFIG_DYNAMIC_DEBUG is not enabled in your environment, perform a debug build with:

make CFLAGS_agnocast.o="-DDEBUG"

File truncated at 100 lines see the full file

Repo symbol

agnocast repository

middleware zero-copy pubsub inter-process-communication ros2
Repo symbol

agnocast repository

middleware zero-copy pubsub inter-process-communication ros2
Repo symbol

agnocast repository

middleware zero-copy pubsub inter-process-communication ros2
Repo symbol

agnocast repository

middleware zero-copy pubsub inter-process-communication ros2
Repo symbol

agnocast repository

middleware zero-copy pubsub inter-process-communication ros2
Repo symbol

agnocast repository

middleware zero-copy pubsub inter-process-communication ros2
Repo symbol

agnocast repository

middleware zero-copy pubsub inter-process-communication ros2
Repo symbol

agnocast repository

middleware zero-copy pubsub inter-process-communication ros2