Objective

• ROS 2 service load-balancing in application layer without protocol change.
• Support multiple service servers on the same service path to have robustness and load-balancing mechanism.
• Scale / Offload ROS 2 service server/client application with remapping but code modification.

How to use

Usage:
    load_balancing_service [-h|--help] [-s|--service-name SERVICE_NAME] [-t|--service-type SERVICE_TYPE] [--strategy XXX] [-i|--interval TIME]
       --strategy choose one of "round_robin", "less_requests" and "less_response_time"
                  If not set, "round_robin" is used as default.
                  "round_robin": select the service server in order.
                  "less_requests": select the service server with the fewest requests.
                  "less_response_time": select the service server with the shortest average response time.
       --interval Interval to discovery service servers. Unit is second.
                  If not set, default is 1s.

Configuration Parameters

• Service Name: This is the original service name. The service server proxy adds a fixed prefix "load_balancing", so the proxy service name becomes "load_balancing/SERVICE_NAME".
• Service Type: e.g) "example_interfaces/srv/AddTwoInts"
• Strategy(optional): Strategy for load balancing. "round_robin"(default), "less_requests" and "less_response_time".
• Interval(Optinoal): Duration(default 1 sec) how often the service server discovery action is performed.

Example

$ ros2 run load_balancing_service load_balancing_service -s add_two_ints -t example_interfaces/srv/AddTwoInts --strategy round_robin -i 1
[INFO] [1727418589.343051995] [main]: 
   Load balancing service name: /load_balancing/add_two_ints
                  Service type: example_interfaces/srv/AddTwoInts
       Load balancing strategy: round_robin
  Interval to discovery server: 1s
------------------------------
Service client remap service name to /load_balancing/add_two_ints
Service server remap service name to /load_balancing/add_two_ints/XXX

It provides hints for the prefixed service names where clients and servers can connect.

• service client should remap service name to "/load_balancing/add_two_ints".
• service server should remap service name to "/load_balancing/add_two_ints/XXX". (XXX needs to be configured by user with service backend.)

Start 2 service servers backend

• Run service server backend with s1.

$ ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp add_two_ints_server --ros-args -r add_two_ints:=load_balancing/add_two_ints/s1

• Run service server backend with s2.

$ ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp add_two_ints_server --ros-args -r add_two_ints:=load_balancing/add_two_ints/s2

Those service backends are discovered and connected by service load-balancer.

Start 10 service clients

Open another terminal, run the this script

$ cat run_clients.sh
#!/bin/bash

for i in {1..10}
do
  ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp add_two_ints_client_async --ros-args -r add_two_ints:=load_balancing/add_two_ints &
done

You will see logs that 5 requests have been received in the two terminals running the service server.

Project repository

https://github.com/barry-Xu-2018/ros2_load_balancing_service/