Real-Time Rust in Robotics
Talkat RustConf 2026 · on Thursday, 2026-09-10· at 13:45· Room 511 | Palais des Congrès de Montréal, Palais des Congrès de Montréal·
summary
Rust replaces C/C++ firmware on motors with pure Rust firmware driving a 10 cm motor board that can deliver 5 kW peak, and Linux-side nodes migrate gradually into Rust (ROS2 nodes, IPC swaps to Zeno and IceORX2). Ecosystem wins are embedded-hal traits and the embassy async executor enabling zerocopy comms and composable drivers; Python interop uses PyO3. Remaining blockers are crate fragmentation (Hyros, Horus, Copper, Dora all young), Cargo config/workspace quirks, and brittle C++ bindings; deployed robots (juggling humanoid, stunt bike) run and perform.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Introduction and thanks
- 0:55What makes a robot a robot
- 3:20General purpose vs specific purpose machines
- 4:52Typical robot software architecture
- 7:43Rust on Linux-based computers
- 9:45ROS 2 and Rust adoption challenges
- 12:29High-performance Rust in robotics
- 13:43Emerging Rust robotics frameworks
- 14:32Inter-language bindings in robotics
- 16:55Summary of Rust on Linux computers
- 17:18Real-time embedded robotics world
- 18:05Rust vs C and C++ in embedded
- 21:59Bare metal Rust replacing OS features
- 23:09Composability in embedded Rust
- 24:18Crate selection challenges in embedded
- 25:42Cargo limitations for bare metal
- 28:28Summary of bare metal Rust
- 29:18Robots running pure Rust firmware
- 30:49Future needs for Rust in robotics
- 31:10Q&A session
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