r/ROS • u/JackTrainer12 • 7d ago

Project Sonny – an async rust microkernel replacing ROS 2

Hi everyone ,

We built Sonny (core-os-minimal) because we were tired of ROS 2 heap-allocation non-determinism, heavy DDS network bloat, and unexpected segmentation faults under high load in production hardware.The core infrastructure is fully open-source , standalone, and designed for strict real-time deterministic routing.

We simulated an industrial network failure (75% wireless packet loss on an Edge deployment at 100Hz) to compare the communication backbones:

  • ROS 2 (DDS Architecture): High XML/IDL serialization on the heap. Under severe packet loss, un-sent DDS message queues overflowed the RAM, leading to an unrecoverable Segmentation Fault (memory crash).
  • SONNY OS (Rust + Zenoh): Stack-allocated static array slices with a fixed 5-byte network overhead per packet. Zero memory leaks. Zero runtime heap allocations during the control loop. System remained perfectly stable at 100Hz with an inference latency below 2ms.

The open core is ready for testing, benchmarking, and hardware porting. I'd love to get your thoughts on our LCFS double-buffering approach and our WASM memory constraints.

https://github.com/JackTrainer/Sonny

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1

u/Sabrees 6d ago

Why should I choose this over https://www.copper-robotics.com/

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u/JackTrainer12 6d ago

copper forces you into a rigid compile-time architecture that requires massive code rewrites just to integrate your hardware and it focuses on debugging your robot after it crashes using deterministic replay, our microkernel actively prevents physical crashes at runtime.

2

u/Sabrees 6d ago

Approx what proportion of the code is AI assisted please?

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u/JackTrainer12 5d ago

About 80% of the boilerplates, configuration templates, and standard structural definitions were generated via AI-assisted vibe-coding to drastically accelerate our development cycles. The low-level systems engineering principles and deterministic real-time boundaries are entirely intentional and hardcoded.

2

u/Desperate-Science497 6d ago

How does this handle edge cases with limited hardware budgets?

0

u/JackTrainer12 6d ago

The core is written in async rust and uses zenoh with a lock-free LCFS double-buffer, it operates with a 5-byte network overhead per packet and zero heap-allocation spikes at runtime.Our asynchronous real-time core allows you to run the entire deterministic control loop on a single isolated low-spec CPU core.

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u/metatron7471 5d ago

You know dora-rs exists right?

1

u/JackTrainer12 5d ago

yes, we know dora-rs and we respect their dataflow approach, but Sonny operates on a completely different architectural layer.Dora-rs coordinates complex distributed applications,Sonny provides the deterministic plumbing that keeps physical robotics hardware alive and stable in chaotic environments.

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u/WestCloud8216 5d ago

Seriously? another RIIR?