Handling memory messages Tutorial for micro-ROS

Jul 21, 2021 Maria Merlan

Having total awareness of what ROS 2 messages and types are being used for, is essential in order to handle memory correctly in an embedded C99 environment.

The following Tutorial “Handling messages memory in micro-ROS ‘’ at icro-ROS web page explains in detail how to handle messages and types memory in micro-ROS.

The two approaches of micro-ROS memory handling are present in this tutorial.

micro-ROS Foxy: Memory handling using traditional allocation approach.

micro-ROS Galactic: Memory handling using type support introspection.

Type Support introspection in C in micro-ROS Galactic distribution enables the new type handling API. This package is able to auto-assign memory to a certain message structure using default dynamic memory allocators.

Thanks to the inclusion of this feature, an automated memory handling for micro-ROS types is available, enhancing the usability of the micro-ROS API.

The tools related to this feature are available in the package micro_ros_utilities and the documentation is available here. Check this example for more information about how to avoid the message memory initialization problems in micro-ROS.

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