[ros-users] nimbro_network: Multi-master ROS network solution

[Max Schwarz]

Hi everyone,

our group has developed a network transport solution for multi-master ROS 
systems. We used it with great success in the DLR SpaceBot-Cup and the DARPA 
Robotics Challenge, where our team (NimbRo Rescue) got fourth place.

Opposed to other multi-master solutions, our software is targeted for *bad* 
networks, such as WiFi connections. For example, it can handle large latencies 
and large packet-drop ratios without introducing further latency or dropping 
messages.

The stack is now available under BSD-3 license here:

https://github.com/AIS-Bonn/nimbro_network

Some features:

 * Topic transport:
   * TCP protocol for transmission guarantee
   * UDP protocol for streaming data without transmission guarantee
   * Optional transparent BZip2 compression using libbz2
   * Experimental Forward Error Correction (FEC) for the UDP transport
   * Automatic topic discovery on the receiver side. The transmitter defines
      which topics get transferred
   * Optional rate-limiting for each topic
 * Service transport:
   * TCP protocol with minimal latency (support for TCP Fast-Open is included)
   * UDP protocol with minimum latency
 * Additional nodes/filters for transmitting the ROS log, TF tree and
   H.264-compressed camera images.
 * rqt plugins for visualization and debugging of network issues

For more details, see the included README file. If you have any questions, 
please don't hesitate to ask me. We would also like to hear from you if you 
end up using our software!

Cheers,
  Max