Software & Middleware

Data Distribution Service (DDS)

Data Distribution Service (DDS) is an Object Management Group middleware standard for real-time, data-centric publish-subscribe communication. It provides decentralized peer discovery and fine-grained quality-of-service policies covering reliability, durability, and deadlines. DDS is the default transport layer underlying ROS 2, with interchangeable vendor implementations such as Fast DDS and Cyclone DDS.

Why it matters for physical AI

Robot software stacks must move sensor and control messages between many processes with predictable latency. DDS's quality-of-service guarantees and brokerless architecture underpin the reliability of ROS 2 systems deployed on real hardware.