Packaging Horus projects as wasm modules

[davidelahoz]

One of the things I dislike of ROS is that it doesn't separate development tools from the development environment (gazebo is usually run as a ROS package in the same environment as the code that will be deployed to production). This feels messy compared to having a docker image with the programs that will run in the robot itself and a simulator that interacts with it.

However, using docker in production is an important overhead compared to developing the robot firmware using a rtos. Micro-Ros has tried solving this, but it isn't as easy to integrate with the available robotic simulators. An intermediate solution, could be using wasm for deploying the software of the robot, since wasm vms already exist for embedded systems.

Given that Horus is written in rust, which is one of the languages that provides best tools for developing wasm modules and that python code can be run using pyodide,it might be interesting to explore the possibility of packaging Horus programs as wasm modules for deployment and for testing it inside simulators

[neos-builder]

This is actually a good idea, I will look into that

[davidelahoz]

Thanks! I think that deployment (generating images that can be installed in a production line and handling firmware and software updates safely) is something that is missing in current robotics frameworks to be used in industrial environments. Given rust focus on safety, Horus could become that, an industrial grade framework for programming robots (one that could be used in something like a commercial autonomous harvester, not just a framework for research projects)