What is copper-rs?

Copper is a deterministic robotics runtime written in Rust. Think of it as a “game engine for robots”: describe your system declaratively and Copper will create a custom scheduler and run it deterministically from cloud simulation down to embedded controllers.

The big idea

You describe your robot as a task graph – a directed graph of components that produce, process, and consume data. Copper reads this graph at compile time and generates a custom deterministic scheduler. At runtime, your tasks execute in a precise, pre-computed order with zero overhead.

  ┌──────────┐     ┌──────────┐     ┌──────────┐
  │  Sensor  │────▶│ Algorithm│────▶│ Actuator │
  │  (Source)│     │  (Task)  │     │  (Sink)  │
  └──────────┘     └──────────┘     └──────────┘

Key features

• Rust-first – Ergonomic and safe.
• Sub-microsecond latency – Zero-alloc, data-oriented runtime.
• Deterministic replay – Every run, bit-for-bit identical.
• Interoperable with ROS 2 – Bridges via Zenoh, opening the path for a progressive migration.
• Runs anywhere – From Linux servers, workstations, and SBCs to bare-metal MPUs.
• Built to ship – One stack from simulation to production.

How it works (in 30 seconds)

1. You define your tasks (Rust structs that implement a trait).
2. You wire them together in a configuration file (copperconfig.ron).
3. A compile-time macro reads the config and generates the scheduler.
4. At runtime, Copper calls your tasks’ process() methods in the optimal order, passing pre-allocated messages between them.

That’s it. No topic discovery, no callback registration, no middleware configuration. Define, wire, run.