We’re fast approaching the day we launch Zenoh 1.0.0 and new features!
It’s more than just another version number. It signifies Eclipse Zenoh’s evolution from a project with potential to robust, reliable software already having global use cases. We’re thrilled to release Zenoh 1.0.0 in the year of the dragon!
The team is currently testing the latest features we want to add for this 1.0.0 version. Our head of Technology, Luca Cominardi, already talked about the new Zenoh features we’ll see in 2024, but not all of them will be in this release. While the team is still working on Zenoh 1.0.0, let’s recap the Zenoh features our users have requested since Zenoh’s inception in 2021.
1. Enhanced API for Zenoh
It’s designed to provide the necessary expressiveness, flexibility, and stability across a variety of programming languages.
This new API is built around a minimal set of well-defined and composable primitives, which allows developers to create more efficient and reliable applications.
The improved API simplifies the development process and ensures that applications built with Zenoh are scalable.
2. Zenoh bridge for ROS
Zenoh’s integration with ROS 1 and ROS 2 are significant features. They allow seamless communication between Zenoh and ROS, enhancing the capabilities of robotic applications.
Julien Enoch discussed and demonstrated the connectivity with ROS in the video below presented during the Zenoh User Meeting 2023.
These integrations are essential as they open up new possibilities for robotics applications, allowing them to leverage Zenoh’s advanced features, such as efficient data distribution, storage, and network communication. This enhances the functionality of robotics applications and improves their efficiency and reliability, making Zenoh an indispensable tool.
3. Zenoh for Android
Android is one of the most popular mobile OS and perhaps the most widely adopted mobile target for non consumer applications in industries such as automotive, automation, and robotics.
Zenoh now supports Android targets and offers support for both Kotlin and Java APIs. Moreover, thanks to the Zenoh plugins that bridge Zenoh to other protocols, such as MQTT, and ROS2, some integration use cases are now simplified, such as controlling a ROS 2 robot from an Android device.
4. Shared Memory and Zero Copy Support
When dealing with large data payloads such as high resolution images, lidar scans, etc. it is extremely important to be able to share these efficiently across applications when running on the same host.
To support these use cases, Zenoh has added native support for Shared Memory and Zero Copy. Out of the box users have support for POSIX shared memory, and through a plugin system can add support for custom shared memory providers.
These providers are then used into the Zenoh shared memory support that allows to transparently do zero copy between applications that are on the same shared memory domain and transparently send the data to applications that are across the network.
5. Zenoh-Pico
Zenoh-Pico is a significant feature introduced in Zenoh, specifically designed for microcontrollers and embedded systems.
This lightweight implementation is a game-changer for extremely constrained devices, which often struggle with limited resources. Zenoh-Pico enhances the capabilities and features these devices can support, enabling them to participate more fully in network communication.
Our team hosted a webinar to explain and demonstrate how it works.
6. Access Control
Zenoh has supported session authentication through a plugin-system since the very beginning.
Additionally, mTLS and QUIC can also be used to establish authenticated secure channels. Recently we’ve also added Access Control, which allows you to finely control which operations are allowed on key expressions.
7. Zenoh Protocol Dissector for Wireshark
We are committed to providing our robotic experts with robust user-friendly solutions. We have created a Zenoh protocol dissector for Wireshark, which allows you to inspect and understand the Zenoh packets exchanged in your network. It is especially useful when you need to:
- Troubleshoot network problems
- Examine security issues
- Verify network applications
- Debug protocol implementations
- Learn about Zenoh’s protocol internals
8. Zenoh for Web Applications
Web applications constitute an increasingly important part of any distributed system because of their ease of deployment and their security via isolation. The incoming TypeScript/JavaScript API for Zenoh will allow any web application to integrate with a Zenoh system seamlessly. It’ll benefit from its flexibility in communications. Zenoh protocol is able to run efficiently over various transports such as WebSockets, TCP or QUIC.
9. Zenoh-Flow
This is Zenoh’s native Data Flow Programming framework, providing a common abstraction for applications ranging from data centres to microcontrollers. It organises applications as a directed graph of nodes, each representing a computational unit, with arcs representing data streams. This model is the foundation for many application domains, including Analytics, Autonomous Driving, and Robotics. Zenoh-Flow is designed to handle complex graphs and significantly improves execution time.
You can read more about Zenoh-Flow or watch our webinar below, hosted by Julien Loudet (our Product Conductor) and Gabriele Baldoni (our Runtime Lead). If you have any questions, leave a comment and they’ll get back to you.
Join the Zenoh Revolution
As we approach the launch of Zenoh 1.0.0, we welcome you to access all these features and the code behind them through the Zenoh GitHub repository.
Whether you’re developing for data centres, microcontrollers, or anything in between, Zenoh’s flexibility and scalability will power your applications to reach their full potential.
Our dedicated team of developers is available on Zenoh’s Discord channel for support and idea exchanges. We’re here to help you make the most of Zenoh’s features and enhancements.