Evaluation of RTOS for Robotic Applications with ROS2 on Embedded Systems

초록

This paper aims to establish a quantitative foundation for applying real time operating systems to robotics systems, where general purpose operating systems like Linux are commonly used but often fail to meet strict timing requirements, especially in time critical domains such as autonomous vehicles, missile guidance, surgical robotics, and nuclear systems. Although ROS2 has become the standard middleware in modern robotics, its deployment on real time operating systems remains rare due to lack of empirical evidence and practical adoption experience in the robotics domain. To address this gap, we quantitatively benchmark ROS2 communication latency across three platforms: standard Linux, soft real time Linux with a PREEMPT RT patch, and the commercial RTOS QNX. Experiments are conducted on an embedded board using identical publisher subscriber logic, under varying message sizes, publication frequencies, intra and inter process configurations, and stress conditions. The results show that QNX consistently achieves lower and more stable latency for small high frequency messages, but suffers degradation under multi node stress scenarios. Based on these findings, we propose a layered control structure in which RTOS handles low level real time tasks such as motor control and sensor feedback, while high level planning and computation remain on GPOS. This study provides a practical reference for robotics system designers considering real time architectures and outlines the trade offs and deployment strategies for adopting RTOS in embedded robotic control.

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