REMS Middleware for Robotics Education and Development Yusuke Tanakay Ankur Mehtay Abstract This paper introduces REMS a robotics middle-

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REMS: Middleware for Robotics Education and Development

Yusuke Tanaka†, Ankur Mehta†

Abstract— This paper introduces REMS, a robotics middle-

ware and control framework that is designed to introduce the

Zen of Python to robotics and to improve robotics education

and development ﬂow. Although existing middleware can serve

hardware abstraction and modularity, setting up environments

and learning middleware-speciﬁc syntax and procedures are

less viable in education. They can curb opportunities to under-

stand robotics concepts, theories, and algorithms. Robotics is

a ﬁeld of integration; students and developers from various

backgrounds will be involved in programming. Establishing

Pythonic and object-oriented robotic framework in a natural

way can enhance modular and abstracted programming for

better readability, reusability, and simplicity, but also supports

useful and practical skills generally in coding. REMS is to be

a valuable robot educational medium not just as a tool and to

be a platform from one robot to multi-agent across hardware,

simulation, and analytical model implementations.

I. INTRODUCTION

Robotics platforms have been proposed to simplify and

generalize programming and integration of robotics tech-

nologies across various areas of study. Popular middleware

ROS [1] enables developers to create a package that can run

cross-platform with a uniﬁed data communication protocol.

OROCOS intends to provide a robot control system with

a soft real-time capability and built-in robotics libraries.

However, such middleware systems require a handful of

setup procedures and compiling packages, and the users

often should spend efforts to start using them [2]. This can

be a considerable disadvantage when the primary focus is

education since students are forced to spare time learning

an uncommon language, syntax, and technologies elsewhere.

Programming for an integrated system such as a robot can

become complex and abstract thinking may not be as intu-

itive [3]. LEGO Mindstorms has been a successful tool for

elementary to college level classrooms thanks to interactive

and fun infrastructure [3], [4]. Although its primary graphical

programming makes robot controls more accessible, there is

still a gap from LEGO to more advanced or custom robots

since Mindstorms is a proprietary system, and all hardware

and software are designed to be integrated.

Python has been gaining popularity because of its sim-

ple ecosystem and readability. The Zen of Python is all

about simplicity: "Beautiful is better than ugly." and "If

the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good

idea." [5]. Introducing the Zen of Python into robotics can

philosophically reinforce robotics software and architectures

to be better readable and sharable. Adapting Python can

†All authors are with the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace

Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095

{yusuketanaka, mehtank}@ucla.edu.

Fig. 1: REMS: robotics middleware and framework. A total of 32 robot

implementations were demonstrated, including simulations in a) and d), and

hardware in b) and c), and analytical models. a) Webots physics simulator

robots: Woodbot, E-puck, Create 2, Youbot, arm, base only, Pioneer DX,

AT, and Moose. b) hardware: Create 2 (top), Dynabot (left) and Woodbot

(right). c) Two-arm 6-DoF manipulator hardware, SCALER Manipulator[25]

and d) Pybullet physics simulation.

beneﬁt users with and without a programming background

due to its simple installation mechanisms, interactive no-

compilation interpreter, and scientiﬁc or machine learning

libraries. Object-oriented structures beneﬁt and accelerate

robotics development with abstracted and modular codes that

can be inherited or merged to create a new system. Such

scalable and coherent designs have the potential to enhance

robotics education and development.

In this paper, we propose REMS: Robotics Education Mid-

dleware System, a robotics middleware and control frame-

work that employs the zen of Python and are designed for

educational and research purpose.

Our contributions are summarized as follows:

1) We develop REMS: a Pythonic robotics middleware

and framework for education and development purpose

2) Object-oriented design to allow users to swap, extend

and combine for a new robot or a functionality

3) Enable simultaneous run of multiple robots and im-

plementations for a multi-agent system and debug-

ging/comparisons

4) Case studies running 32 robot implementations, and

applications in an academic class and research

II. RELATED WORKS

A. Middleware in Robotics

Robot Operation System (ROS and ROS2) is one of the

most well-known and widespread middleware for robotics

[1]. ROS provides a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) and

arXiv:2210.05784v1 [cs.RO] 11 Oct 2022

allows graph node-edge-based generalized communications.

HAL modulates the system’s actual implementation, which

may depend on speciﬁc hardware or programming language,

and improves compatibility with other systems and reusabil-

ity. Node connections can be inter-device since ROS 1

uses a custom TCP/IP protocol, and ROS 2 is based on

Data Distribution Service (DDS), which is more secure and

appropriate for industrial use cases [1]. However, ROS itself

does not provide robotic system architectures, and the user

should design graph communications. Even though a robot is

compatible with ROS, it does not mean it is indeed developed

using ROS inside, but the ROS node is prepared for a generic

external communication medium.

Yet Another Robot Platform (YARP) is an open-sourced

middleware to provide HAL and uniﬁed communications

between modules along with robotics libraries to provide

control infrastructure of the robots [6].

In industry, proprietary platforms and programming lan-

guages are developed for a particular family of products, such

as KUKA Robot Language (KRL) for KUKA robot arms [7],

and B&R Automation Studio for their programmable logic

controllers (PLC) [8]. They provide uniform and abstracted

access to devices with integrated robotics API libraries

and safety systems, although proprietary systems require

licensing and speciﬁc hardware.

B. Hardware Oriented Middleware

Open Robot Control Software (OROCOS) is an open-

sourced robotic control framework focused on real-time

performance [9]. Although ROS 2 has enhanced real-time

capability, OROCOS has superior latency and jitters in Inter-

Process Communication (IPC), particularly with modiﬁed

Linux kernels such as Xenomai [10]. OROCOS framework

includes standard APIs for robotics in C++, such as kine-

matics, Bayesian ﬁltering, state machines, etc.

IPC can restrict the system’s real-time operation and cyclic

speed since data cannot be referred by memory address, and

the data must be copied and serialized to another process

[11]. Hard real-time system guarantee a response time with

a certain maximum deviation, while soft real-time system

bounds average response time [12]. Many attempts toward

soft real-time requirements, including OROCOS, have been

done in RT-Middleware [13] and TZC [11].

Hard real-time is signiﬁcantly strict and requires low

latency hardware, a real-time operating system (RT-OS),

and strict time synchronization, primary for safety purpose

[12]. The automation industry has developed proprietary

PLC to achieve low-latency hard real-time programming

environments by custom designing from hardware to RTOS,

such as B&R Automation studio [8]. XBotCore is an open-

sourced hard real-time software platform for EtherCAT-based

robots [14].

One of the most successful educational purpose middle-

ware is the LEGO Mindstorms series [3]. Their Graphical

Programming Language (GPL) is suitable for students and

beginners unfamiliar with programming. The GPL grants a

coding environment as if the users are assembling bricks. For

more advanced users, LEGO Mindstorms supports C++ and

Python. However, their costs, limited simulation, and propri-

etary hardware barriers introducing them into classrooms or

moving onto different or custom hardware.

C. Middleware for Multi-Agent and Cloud Robotic

Various middleware has targeted to enhance HAL into

a robot, task or team scale to simplify programming at

different levels and modulate them to reuse. Task-level GPLs,

RAZER, etc., are toward end-users so they can program

a robot during operations and without an engineer [15].

They can help facilitate automation and robotics technolo-

gies to lesser-technical creative industries with human-robot

interaction in mind [16]. ManiWare is dedicated to team-

level abstraction and synchronization for manipulators to

conduct teamwork operations among different arms [17].

CORNET integrates unmanned aerial vehicle physics and

network simulators to realize a cyber-physical system of

multi-agent drones [18].

Cloud robotics offers ofﬂoading computation-intensive

tasks and access to cloud resources such as CPU, GPU,

storage, and a global map [19]. Multi-agent and collaborative

robots can beneﬁt from cloud infrastructure. XbotCloud is

a cloud-integrated system designed for XbotCore-operated

robots [20].

III. REMS CONCEPT AND PRINCIPLE

A. Concepts

Our middleware , REMS, design primary concepts are the

following:

•The Zen of Python to robotics

•Provide robotic framework off-the-shelve

•Moduled robot deﬁnitions and implementations

•Scalable from one to multi-agent

The concept of Pythonic programming is about simple,

concise, and readable coding. Each class and method have a

clear role in the system. With other common middleware,

learning curves are steep at the beginning because users

should learn the speciﬁc syntax, language, process, etc. of the

middleware that are not standard or uncommon elsewhere,

i.e., IDL in ROS. Even setting up and installing a ROS pack-

age is already a signiﬁcant achievement due to complicated

version dependencies [2]. The robotics domain spreads not

merely to computer science but to people with a mechanical

or electrical engineering background. In education settings, it

can take away vital opportunities to learn more about theories

and algorithms by spending time on technical details that are

only applicable in a limited ﬁeld area.

Developers should put considerable design efforts into

software architecture to integrate various components in

robotics. Providing a robot control pipeline simpliﬁes the

initial setup and implementation time. The architecture itself

can educate learners on what parts should be in the robot

system as well as basic concepts of programming, such as

abstraction and modularity.

Abstraction in a robot is more complex than said. What

deﬁnes a robot to be and what does not, are not clear

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REMS:MiddlewareforRoboticsEducationandDevelopmentYusukeTanakay,AnkurMehtayAbstractThispaperintroducesREMS,aroboticsmiddle-wareandcontrolframeworkthatisdesignedtointroducetheZenofPythontoroboticsandtoimproveroboticseducationanddevelopmentow.Althoughexistingmiddlewarecanservehardwareabstractionandmo...

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REMS Middleware for Robotics Education and Development Yusuke Tanakay Ankur Mehtay Abstract This paper introduces REMS a robotics middle-

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