ROS 2 in a Nutshell: A Survey

Abstract

The Robot Operating System (ROS) has been the de facto standard framework for developing robotics applications since 2009. Its successor, ROS 2, addresses critical limitations in reliability, real-time performance, security, and multi-robot scalability through a fundamentally redesigned architecture built on the Data Distribution Service (DDS) middleware.

This survey provides a comprehensive, multidimensional review of ROS 2 research, guided by three research questions:

RQ1: How does ROS 2 improve upon ROS 1 in architecture, design goals, and features, and what new limitations arise?

RQ2: What advances in ROS 2's technical foundations emerge from the literature, and how are they deployed?

RQ3: What frameworks, libraries, and tools have emerged in the ROS 2 ecosystem, and which areas remain underdeveloped?

We analyze over 8,500 publications spanning 2009–2026, organizing advances into four pillars: (1) middleware architectures, (2) real-time scheduling and hardware acceleration, (3) security, privacy, and safety, and (4) multi-robot and distributed coordination. The survey is accompanied by a curated, publicly accessible database of ROS-related resources.

Four Research Pillars

1 Middleware Architectures

DDS-based communication, RMW abstraction layers, QoS policies, Zenoh as a post-DDS alternative, and the "readiness paradox" of operational complexity vs. architectural sophistication.

2 Real-Time & Hardware Acceleration

Executor models, PREEMPT_RT integration, response-time analysis, micro-ROS for MCUs, FPGA/GPU acceleration, and cross-layer scheduling frameworks.

3 Security, Privacy & Safety

SROS2 overhead benchmarks, DDS Security, intrusion detection, privacy-aware data flow, mixed-criticality scheduling, and formal verification.

4 Multi-Robot & Distributed Systems

Fleet management (Open-RMF), DDS discovery in large networks, edge/cloud offloading, heterogeneous coordination, and scalability challenges.

The Survey Taxonomy

Every publication is classified along four independent dimensions: contribution type, research domain, application context, and fine-grained keyword labels.

The multi-dimensional taxonomy used to classify ROS 2 publications — contribution type (Application / Core / Ecosystem), functional research domain and subdomain, application context (industry field and robot platform), and cross-domain keyword labels. Click to view full size, or explore it interactively.

Database Insights

Quantitative analysis from our curated, continuously updated database of 8,566 ROS publications.

Publication growth: ROS 1 vs ROS 2 (2009–2026). ROS 2 research has grown steadily since 2017.

ROS 2's share of all ROS publications over time.

Distribution of ROS 2 research across application domains.

ROS 2 article type distribution: Applications, Core, and Ecosystem.

Top publishers of ROS 2 research.

ROS 2 community packages categorized by robot stack and infrastructure type.

ROS 2 research subdomain distribution across the taxonomy.

Key Findings

ROS 2 adoption is accelerating: ROS 2 distributions collectively account for nearly half of all ROS downloads since 2023, with 1,319 ROS 2-focused publications indexed in our database of 8,566 papers.
Real-time remains an open frontier: While executors, QoS policies, and PREEMPT_RT integration improve predictability, end-to-end determinism depends on OS configuration, DDS vendor, and executor design. SROS2 adds 0.5–2 ms per hop.
The readiness paradox: ROS 2's architecture surpasses ROS 1, but DDS discovery storms, vendor-specific QoS semantics, and multicast tuning difficulties mean deployment complexity persists. Zenoh (Tier-1 RMW since Jazzy) reduces discovery overhead by 97–99%.
Safety-critical domains are underrepresented: Navigation/SLAM (~28%) and manipulation (~18%) dominate, while surgical robotics and aerospace account for <5% combined.
Ecosystem growth: 176 curated community packages span perception, planning, control, simulation, and fleet management.
Community-maintained dataset: The full dataset is publicly available on GitHub under CC-BY-4.0, welcoming community contributions.

BibTeX

@article{AlBatati2026ROS2,
  author    = {Al-Batati, Abdulrahman and Koubaa, Anis and Gabr, Khaled and Abdelkader, Mohamed and Aloqaily, Hamad},
  title     = {ROS 2 in a Nutshell: A Survey},
  journal   = {ACM Computing Surveys},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  year      = {2026},
  month     = {may},
  issn      = {0360-0300},
  doi       = {10.1145/3815113},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3815113}
}