Roboflow

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Roboflow is a universal, schema-driven runtime decoding engine for robotics data. Convert between ROS bag files, MCAP, and different message formats with a simple fluent API.

Quick Start

Rust

use roboflow::Robocodec;

// Convert ROS bag to MCAP
Robocodec::open(vec!["input.bag"])?
    .write_to("output.mcap")
    .run()?;

Python

import roboflow

# Convert ROS bag to MCAP
result = roboflow.Roboflow.open(["input.bag"]) \
    .write_to("output.mcap") \
    .run()

Command Line

# Convert between formats
convert input.bag output.mcap

# Inspect file contents
inspect data.mcap

# Extract specific topics
extract data.bag --topics /camera/image_raw --output extracted/

Installation

Note: PyPI and crates.io packages are being prepared. For now, build from source (see CONTRIBUTING.md).

Rust Dependency

Add to Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
roboflow = "0.1"

For the format library only:

[dependencies]
robocodec = "0.1"

Python Package

pip install roboflow

Features

• Multi-Format Support: CDR (ROS1/ROS2), Protobuf, JSON
• File Format Support: MCAP, ROS1 bag (read/write)
• Schema Parsing: ROS .msg, ROS2 IDL, OMG IDL
• Cross-Language: Rust and Python APIs with full feature parity
• High-Performance: Parallel processing pipelines up to ~1800 MB/s
• Data Transformation: Topic renaming, type normalization, format conversion

Supported Formats

Format	Read	Write	Notes
MCAP	✅	✅	Robotics data format optimized for appending
ROS1 Bag	✅	✅	ROS1 rosbag format
CDR	✅	✅	Common Data Representation (ROS1/ROS2)
Protobuf	✅	✅	Protocol Buffers
JSON	✅	✅	JSON serialization

Schema Support

• ROS .msg files (ROS1)
• ROS2 IDL (Interface Definition Language)
• OMG IDL (Object Management Group)

Usage Examples

Batch Processing

use roboflow::{Robocodec, pipeline::fluent::CompressionPreset};

// Process multiple files
Robocodec::open(vec!["a.bag", "b.bag"])?
    .write_to("/output/dir")
    .with_compression(CompressionPreset::Fast)
    .run()?;

With Transformations

use robocodec::TransformBuilder;

let transform = TransformBuilder::new()
    .with_topic_rename("/old_topic", "/new_topic")
    .build();

Robocodec::open(vec!["input.bag"])?
    .transform(transform)
    .write_to("output.mcap")
    .run()?;

Hyper Mode (Maximum Throughput)

Robocodec::open(vec!["input.bag"])?
    .write_to("output.mcap")
    .hyper_mode()
    .run()?;

KPS Dataset Conversion (Experimental)

⚠️ Experimental: APIs may change between versions.

Convert robotics data to KPS dataset format:

roboflow convert to-kps input.mcap ./output/ config.toml

Command Line Tools

Tool	Description
convert	Convert between bag/MCAP formats
extract	Extract data from files
inspect	Inspect file metadata
schema	Work with schema definitions
search	Search through data files

Documentation

• Architecture - High-level system design
• Pipeline - Async pipeline architecture
• Memory Management - Zero-copy and arena allocation
• Contributing - Development setup and guidelines

Contributing

We welcome contributions! See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup and guidelines.

License

This project is licensed under the MulanPSL v2 - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

Robocodec was originally developed as part of the Strata robotics platform.

Related Projects

• MCAP - Common data format optimized for appending in robotics community
• ROS - Robot Operating System

Links

• Issue Tracker
• Changelog