Zenoh-based Dataflow Framework for Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

Autonomous Vehicle Softwares are complex to implement. They have strong security and safety constraints and are at the crossroad of several domains, thus leading to as many independent components. Plus, as foreseen by the Vehicle to Everything paradigm, Autonomous Vehicles are expected to interact with their surroundings, again increasing their overall complexity. To cope with these requirements, frameworks based on dataflow programming are emerging. Indeed, dataflow programming is particularly suited in this context as it is already being used in robotics and time-critical applications. However, it was not designed with decentralization in mind, hence leaving all communication-related aspects to application developers. To address these challenges, we propose to leverage Eclipse Zenoh, an Edge-native technology. For that purpose, we first show how we used Zenoh to enhance ERDOS, a dataflow framework for Autonomous Vehicles. We then motivate and draft our own dataflow framework based on Zenoh: Zenoh Flow.