Build a real-time robot perception pipeline connecting a camera node, YOLO detection node, and motor command node using a YAML config.
Replace a slow ROS2 Python pipeline with Dora for faster data passing between AI model inference nodes.
Deploy a multi-node robotics application across several machines over SSH using a single Dora CLI command.
Prototype a robotics AI system mixing Python and Rust nodes, reloading Python logic live without restarting the app.
| dora-rs/dora | deuxfleurs-org/garage | findomain/findomain | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | 3,754 | 3,767 | 3,736 |
| Language | Rust | Rust | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | moderate | hard | moderate |
| Complexity | 3/5 | 4/5 | 3/5 |
| Audience | developer | ops devops | ops devops |
Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.
Needs Rust toolchain for Rust nodes, available via pip for Python nodes, ROS2 bridge requires a ROS2 install.
Dora is a Rust framework for building real-time robotics and AI applications. It is designed around the concept of dataflows: you describe your application as a directed graph of nodes, where each node does a specific job (reading a camera, running a detection model, sending motor commands), and Dora handles passing data between them efficiently. This graph is written in a YAML file, making it easy to visualize and reconfigure the pipeline without changing code. Performance is a central focus. The framework claims to be 10 to 17 times faster than the equivalent Python setup in ROS2, which is the standard middleware used in the robotics industry. It achieves this by using shared memory to pass large data between nodes on the same machine, skipping unnecessary copying, and using Apache Arrow as its internal data format, which avoids serialization overhead. Nodes running on different machines communicate automatically over a network protocol called Zenoh. Developing with Dora does not lock you into a single language. Nodes can be written in Rust, Python, C, or C++, and you can mix languages freely in one dataflow. Python nodes can be reloaded live while the application is running, which speeds up iteration. The framework also ships with a library of ready-made nodes for common robotics tasks: cameras, object detection with YOLO, large language models, and text-to-speech. The single command-line tool covers the full development cycle: running locally, deploying to a cluster of machines over SSH, inspecting live data streams, recording and replaying sessions for testing, and monitoring per-node CPU and memory usage across all machines in a terminal dashboard. It also includes a bridge for working with ROS2, the existing industry standard, so Dora nodes and ROS2 nodes can exchange messages. For production use, Dora supports per-node restart policies with backoff, dynamic addition and removal of nodes from a running system, optional soft real-time scheduling, and distributed tracing through OpenTelemetry. The framework is available via the Rust package registry and Python's pip, and installers are provided for macOS, Linux, and Windows.
A fast Rust framework for robotics and AI pipelines that connects nodes (camera, model, motor controller) via a YAML dataflow graph, claiming 10-17x faster performance than ROS2.
Mainly Rust. The stack also includes Rust, Python, C.
Apache 2.0, free for any use including commercial, keep the license notice.
Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 30min to a first successful run.
Mainly developer.
This repo across BitVibe Labs
double-check against the repo, no cap.