# Impact of ROS 2 Node Composition in Robotic Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.09933 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.09933/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 17 May 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [InCoRo: In-Context Learning for Robotics Control with Feedback Loops](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05188/) (2024)
- [HawkDrive: A Transformer-driven Visual Perception System for Autonomous Driving in Night Scene](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04653/) (2024)
- [RAI: Flexible Agent Framework for Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07532/) (2025)
- [Humanoid Occupancy: Enabling A Generalized Multimodal Occupancy Perception System on Humanoid Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20217/) (2025)
- [JEMA: A Joint Embedding Framework for Scalable Co-Learning with Multimodal Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23988/) (2024)
- [Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap with multipanda_ros2: A Real-Time ROS2 Framework for Multimanual Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02269/) (2026)
- [Embodied Operators and Benchmarking: Toward Reusable and Deployable Embodied Intelligence Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.03283/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) is the second generation of ROS representing a step forward in the robotic framework. Several new types of nodes and executor models are integral to control where, how, and when information is processed in the computational graph. This paper explores and benchmarks one of these new node types -- the Component node -- which allows nodes to be composed manually or dynamically into processes while retaining separation of concerns in a codebase for distributed development. Composition is shown to achieve a high degree of performance optimization, particularly valuable for resource-constrained systems and sensor processing pipelines, enabling distributed tasks that would not be otherwise possible in ROS 2. In this work, we briefly introduce the significance and design of node composition, then our contribution of benchmarking is provided to analyze its impact on robotic systems. Its compelling influence on performance is shown through several experiments on the latest Long Term Support (LTS) ROS 2 distribution, Humble Hawksbill.