Links and Nodes: Middleware for distributed real-time robotic systems

Links and Nodes (LN) is open-source middleware for building distributed real-time robotic systems.Middleware handles communication and coordination between programs, so developers can use common interaction patterns instead of rebuilding them in each component.LN combines process management with fast publish/subscribe messaging and request/response services, so complex multi-process systems can be reproduced from one text file.Developed internally at DLR from August 2010, released as open source in 2015, and hosted in its current public GitLab repository since 2020, LN supports robotics applications requiring deterministic behavior, low-latency communication, and coordinated process control across hosts and programming languages.