After a fruitful discussion at the last session, we will continue exploring how to approach introducing standardized infrastructure messages into the ROS 2 ecosystem.
We will present and discuss some ideas on how to encapsulate the key data structures that need to be transmitted. In particular there will be a proposal about having three types of data:
- State: Data that describes what a device is doing at any given moment.
- Properties: Data that describes inherent characteristics of a device, which rarely if ever change after being deployed.
- Requests: Data that describes an action for a device to perform or a state for a device to move into.
We will share some examples of how messages can be organized into these types and how pub/sub topics might be designed to use them.
A particularly challenging question that will be raised is whether property data should be modular (spread across multiple message types and transmitted across a different topic for each type), and if so what the granularity should be. Or should the property data of a device all get lumped into one message and transmitted across one topic. Same for the state data.
As always we will open up for general discussion at the end. Like at the last session, the concluding discussion will not be recorded, but anonymous notes will be taken to preserve any feedback or ideas that are raised.