## 6 Governing Software
### Operating Systems  
The Robot Operating System (ROS) is predominant in the papers examined in the context of our state-of-the-art study on the use of UGVs for agriculture. Other robotic operating systems in the field of agriculture were not found to be relevant, which is why they were not discussed in detail. Remarkably, when major ICT industry players propose solutions for robot implementations, whether computational devices or sensors, they primarily focus on ROS environments. This is the case, for instance, of Nvidia with Isaac \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l l l l l l l l} \hline \hline
**MFR \({}^{1}\)** & **Model** & **HR (deg) \({}^{1}\)** & **VR (deg) \({}^{1}\)** & **SR (Hz) \({}^{1}\)** & **MR (m) \({}^{1}\)** & **FoV (deg) \({}^{1}\)** & **Acc (cm) \({}^{1}\)** & **Intf \({}^{1}\)** & **Prot \({}^{1}\)** \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{Velodyne} & Puck VLP-16 & 0.1-0.4 & 2 & 5-20 & 100 & \(30\times 360\) & 3 & ethernet & IV67 \\ \cline{2-10}  & Ultra Puck VLP-32c & 0.1-0.4 & 0.33 & 5-20 & 200 & \(40\times 360\) & 3 & ethernet & IV67 \\ \cline{2-10}  & HDL-32 & 0.08-0.33 & 1.33 & 5-20 & 100 & \(41\times 360\) & 2 & ethernet & IV67 \\ \cline{2-10}  & Alpha Prime & 0.1-0.4 & 0.11 & 5-20 & 245 & \(40\times 360\) & 3 & ethernet & IV67 \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Imoviz} & One & 0.1 & 0.1 & 10-15 & 250 & \(25\times 115\) & 3 & MIPI CSI-2 & IV68 Gv \\ \cline{2-10}  & Two & 0.05 & 0.05 & 20 & 300 & \(43\times 120\) & 1 & MIPI CSI-2 & IV68 Gv \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Leddar Tech} & Fusell & n/a & n/a & 20 & 56 & \(16\times 178\) & 3 & ethernet & IV67 \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Quangery Systems} & M8-Prime Ultra & 0.033 & 0.033 & 5-20 & 200 & \(20\times 360\) & 3 & ethernet & IV69K \\ \cline{2-10}  & VUX-1 HA & 0.001 & \((*)\) & 250 & 150 & 360 & 0.5 & ethernet, USB & IV64 \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Sick AG} & LMS511 & 0.17 & \((*)\) & 25–100 & 80 & 190 & 0.24 & ethernet & IV67 \\ \hline \end{tabular} \((*)\) 2D LiDAR. \({}^{1}\) MFR = “manufacturer”; HR = “horizontal resolution”; VR = “vertical resolution”; SR = “scan rate”; MR = “maximum range”; FoV = “Field of View (V \(\times\) H)”; Acc = “accuracy”; Inft = “interface”; Prot = “protection”.  
\end{table} 
Table 2: Commercial LiDARs particularly suited for crop surveillance. ROS [41] and Intel with RealSense cameras [42]. Agricultural rovers tend to use robust and high-efficiency operating systems that can handle the complex operations required for autonomous navigation and mapping tasks. Despite its name, the Robot Operating System is not an operating system in the traditional sense, but rather a framework for implementing robot software. It is widely adopted for demanding farming applications thanks to its modular architecture and the wide range of libraries and drivers that are available. Two main versions of ROS [43; 44; 45; 46; 47] can be used: ROS1 [7] and ROS2 [48; 49; 50; 51]. ROS1, launched in 2007, offers a well-supported and established structure, ideal for many existing systems, with a broad ecosystem of packages and a large community. However, it is being deprecated (support is scheduled to end in 2025), encouraging the transition to ROS2. The latter, introduced in 2017, is designed with significant improvements for supporting real-time systems, enhanced communication security, and the more efficient management of distributed devices, making ROS2 particularly suitable for more demanding applications and use in critical environments. We summarize the main differences as follows:  
* Communication Architecture:
* ROS1 uses a centralized communication model with a single node (the ROS Master), which facilitates node connections but is a possible bottleneck and a point of failure. * ROS2 adopts a decentralized architecture without a master node, using the DDS (Data Distribution Service), which improves system scalability and resilience. * Real-time Performance:
* ROS1 does not provide native support for real-time operations.