[neos-builder] wrote in to let us know about their innovation: the HORUS Framework — Hybrid Optimized Robotics Unified System — a production-grade robotics framework built in Rust for real-time performance and memory safety.
This is a batteries included system which aims to have everything you might need available out of the box. [neos-builder] said their vision is to create a robotics framework that is “thick” as a whole (we can’t avoid this as the tools, drivers, etc. make it impossible to be slim and fit everyone’s needs), but modular by choice.
[neos-builder] goes on to say that HORUS aims to provide developers an interface where they can focus on writing algorithms and logic, not on setting up their environments and solving configuration issues and resolving DLL hell. With HORUS instead of writing one monolithic program, you build independent nodes, connected by topics, which are run by a scheduler. If you’d like to know more the documentation is extensive.
The list of features is far too long for us to repeat here, but one cool feature in addition to the real-time performance and modular design that jumped out at us was this system’s ability to process six million messages per second, sustained. That’s a lot of messages! Another neat feature is the system’s ability to “freeze” the environment, thereby assuring everyone on the team is using the same version of included components, no more “but it works on my machine!” And we should probably let you know that Python integration is a feature, connected by shared-memory inter-process communication (IPC).
If you’re interested in robotics and/or real-time systems you should definitely be aware of HORUS. Thanks to [neos-builder] for writing in about it. If you’re interested in real-time systems you might like to read Real-Time BART In A Box Smaller Than Your Coffee Mug and Real-Time Beamforming With Software-Defined Radio.
They quote all sorts of performance stats like latency times but never once mention what platform/hardware it actually runs on… is this one of those “IYKYK” things that those of us who aren’t in the robotics community just don’t know?
Because it’s all written as if you’re running it on a regular PC which then must surely imply a realtime OS if any of this is actually going to work as advertised?
It runs Rust. If you don’t like it go back to writing C and pray your code will leak memory in places where it won’t cause grave injury to people.
haaa…the great answer that does help so much. Been able to be be condescending without actually addressing the legitimate question AND putting word in the mouth of the original poster that he never said is really a magnificent talent. Will IA ever be able to replicate that…
To adress the question, that would be indeed very interesting to know. Because the numbers looks great but it needs to have some context.
Low quality bait
Yeah, platforms are listed here: https://docs.horus-registry.dev/ and it claims “Hard real-time control (<1ms loops)”. On Linux I guess it could use PREEMPT_RT kernel support. But I don’t really see any mention of that either.
There is just no way to get hard real-time sub-1ms control across all platforms, so the claim seems dubious.
ah. they could have called it HOURS in stead, missed opportunity..
Developers are fans of Lancer RPG.