Related Work
OpenRoIS complements existing robot middleware rather than competing with it. It works at the level of human-robot interaction services, above the middleware that moves data inside a robot.
ROS and ROS 2
ROS and ROS 2 are the most widely used middleware in research robotics. OpenRoIS places ROS 2 behind an adapter: synchronous RoIS operations map to ROS 2 services, long-running operations to actions, and notifications to topics. A service application then addresses ROS 2 robots, robots built on other middleware, and virtual agents through the same symbolic interface, without depending on ROS 2 itself.
Open-RMF
Open-RMF coordinates heterogeneous robot fleets and shared infrastructure, such as doors and elevators, above the control of individual robots. It answers how many robots share a building. OpenRoIS answers how an application interacts with a person through one robot or agent. The two are complementary, and RoIS components can run on robots coordinated by Open-RMF.
| Open-RMF | OpenRoIS | |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Fleet coordination and traffic management | Human-robot interaction services |
| Question | How do many robots share a space? | How does this robot or agent interact with a person? |
| Standard basis | Open-source convention | OMG RoIS 2.0 |
RT-Middleware and the OMG Robotic Technology Component
RT-Middleware pioneered component-based robot middleware and led to the OMG Robotic Technology Component (RTC) specification, which RoIS references. OpenRoIS builds on that lineage at the service level, where RTC focuses on component lifecycle and data ports.
RSNP
The Robot Service Network Protocol (RSNP) defined a web-services protocol for networked robot services. It shares the goal of reaching robots over networks, which OpenRoIS pursues with a WebSocket and JSON-RPC 2.0 transport for the RoIS messages.
The RoIS Specification
RoIS was developed by the Japan Robot Association (JARA) and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and standardized by the Object Management Group. Version 1.0 was published in 2013 and version 2.0 in June 2026. It defines a platform-independent model and leaves the transport and the implementation open. OpenRoIS does not fork or extend the specification. It is one concrete, openly developed implementation of it, and it documents every implementation choice the specification leaves to implementers.