# Latency Analysis of ROS2 Multi-Node Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.02074 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.02074/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 6 Jan 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [A Framework for Real-World Multi-Robot Systems Running Decentralized GNN-Based Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.01777/) (2021)
- [Embodied Foundation Models at the Edge: A Survey of Deployment Constraints and Mitigation Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16952/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The Robot Operating System 2 (ROS2) targets distributed real-time systems and is widely used in the robotics community. Especially in these systems, latency in data processing and communication can lead to instabilities. Though being highly configurable with respect to latency, ROS2 is often used with its default settings. In this paper, we investigate the end-to-end latency of ROS2 for distributed systems with default settings and different Data Distribution Service (DDS) middlewares. In addition, we profile the ROS2 stack and point out latency bottlenecks. Our findings indicate that end-to-end latency strongly depends on the used DDS middleware. Moreover, we show that ROS2 can lead to 50% latency overhead compared to using low-level DDS communications. Our results imply guidelines for designing distributed ROS2 architectures and indicate possibilities for reducing the ROS2 overhead.