Improvement of XRCE-DDS Communication System for Swarm Environment of Unmanned Vehicles Based on PX4-ROS2

Hyeongyu Lee, Doyoon Kim, Dongoo Lee, Sungtae Moon

http://doi.org/10.5626/JOK.2025.52.3.227

Recently, swarm vehicles are being used in various fields due to the development of swarm operation technology. Among various systems that constitute a swarm vehicle, PX4-ROS2 connects the PX4, an unmanned vehicle control computer, and ROS2 for mission execution through XRCE-DDS (eXtremely Resource Constrained Environments-Data Distribution Service), an open-source-based software that supports real-time communication between devices. However, the operation of swarm unmanned vehicles based on a wireless network using a distributed service of XRCE-DDS is not optimized. It requires communication optimization work for stable operation. In this paper, we analyzed the XRCE-DDS communication structure operating in PX4-ROS2 and proposed a new Discovery mechanism to solve the problem of increased communication volume due to increased nodes during swarm operation. We present a method to enhance the stability and scalability of communication and verified it through simulation.