Comparison with VDA5050

[Achllle]

VDA5050 is a protocol by the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) which describes a very similar objective as RMF: A system + protocol for traffic deconfliction and control, order dispatching, and interfacing with peripherals for heterogeneous fleets of mobile robots. It would be good to:

• refer to its existence
• describe various differences and correspondences
• perhaps even touch on a possible road to compatibility between the two protocols - VDA5050 is a well thought-out protocol that is starting to see industry adoption

Some obvious similarities include:

• The aforementioned objectives
• use of a shared graph and coordinate system for traffic control
• centralized coordination and task dispatching (no swam intelligence)

Some obvious differences include:

• Use of MQTT
• heavier focus on direct comms between a broker and the AGVs as opposed to sitting on top of the fleet server
• different topic structure and messages
• concepts of order horizon and planning specifics

[ItamarEliakim-R]

Hey.
Do you have any additional insights on that? Have you tried integrating the VDA5050 standard as a middleware/adapter for the RMF?

Thanks.