OpenHarmony Transforms Robotics Industry with Groundbreaking Distributed Operating System

In today’s manufacturing facilities, robots from diverse origins—German, Japanese, American—operate on disparate platforms, essentially speaking different languages and unable to comprehend one another’s commands. This fragmentation necessitates substantial calibration expenses and hampers collaborative efficiency. However, OpenHarmony has introduced a revolutionary alternative for robotic operating systems that could fundamentally alter this paradigm.

China’s First Distributed Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Collaboration System

In April 2025, Shenzhen OpenHarmony Digital Industry Development Co., Ltd. unveiled M-Robots OS 1.0, China’s pioneering distributed heterogeneous multi-robot collaboration operating system built on OpenHarmony architecture.

The introduction of M-Robots OS 1.0 has not only enabled microsecond-level reactions and synchronized operations among industrial robots but has also addressed a critical technological gap in China’s domestic robot operating system landscape with its fully indigenous technology stack. This innovation represents a direct challenge to ROS, the globally dominant robot operating system.

In the global wave of manufacturing intelligence upgrades, robot operating systems have become essential infrastructure in factories, functioning as the “soul” that integrates hardware components like sensors and motors with algorithmic software systems. The operating system determines a robot’s intelligence level, collaborative capabilities, and ecosystem extensibility, enhancing both individual performance and enabling multi-robot coordination. Without an operating system, robots struggle to execute complex motion planning and autonomous decision-making, forcing developers to repeatedly recreate fundamental capabilities like communication, navigation, and vision for each project.

Limitations of Current Robot Operating Systems

Despite the adoption of operating systems, the robotics sector still confronts an unavoidable challenge: robots from different manufacturers typically employ incompatible operating systems, preventing efficient collaboration and remaining stuck in “single-machine intelligence” paradigms. The ROS operating system, which powers approximately 80% of industrial robots worldwide, exhibits several significant shortcomings.

First, ROS’s reaction speed is insufficient, with real-time responses measured in milliseconds. For precision manufacturing, surgical procedures, autonomous driving, and other complex real-world scenarios, communication delays cause mechanical arm tremors and positioning errors that may create safety hazards and prevent large-scale, high-precision robotic collaboration.

Second, ROS suffers from poor compatibility and steep learning curves, making multi-robot integration difficult. Its loosely coupled architecture and reliance on fixed message formats for inter-node communication necessitate custom interface development for different robot brands. Programming requires specialists proficient in Linux and C++, resulting in extended debugging cycles and high costs—a significant burden for small and medium enterprises.

Finally, long-term monopolization presents security vulnerabilities. Google acquired the ROS system in 2022 with an apparent strategy to replicate Android’s success model, encouraging all global robot manufacturers to build on ROS and consolidate the ecosystem through nominal open-source practices while maintaining actual control. If Google’s plan succeeds, it would dominate both technical and commercial authority in the robotics industry, potentially creating supply disruption risks. Meanwhile, domestic Chinese robotics companies pursue incompatible technological approaches, resulting in severe fragmentation without interoperable operating systems.

M-Robots OS: Revolutionary Microsecond-Level Response

M-Robots OS was specifically developed to address these challenges, enabling diverse robot brands and types to operate as a cohesive, well-trained team without complex adaptation processes.

The fundamental breakthrough of M-Robots OS lies in its distributed architecture and ultra-low latency control, facilitating robot collaboration with human-like fluidity.

The primary element for effective robot teamwork is faster coordination. Compared to ROS’s millisecond-level reaction time, M-Robots OS achieves real-time performance metrics (interrupt delays below 1 microsecond, task switching delays under 1 microsecond), representing an order-of-magnitude improvement that delivers greater precision in robot movements. M-Robots OS has already completed verification testing in critical applications including industrial robotic arms, collaborative robots, and mobile operation robots, with high-precision coordination among multiple mechanical arms boosting factory production efficiency by 30%.

M-Robots OS simultaneously delivers enhanced compatibility and reduced development barriers. Its distributed software bus technology eliminates the “thousand robots, thousand interfaces” problem, enabling “plug-and-play” functionality across multiple brands. The system can connect over 200 device types, including industrial robotic arms, drones, and AGVs. Inter-brand robot collaboration becomes more efficient with reduced communication latency, allowing factories to flexibly reconfigure production lines without device compatibility constraints.

Moreover, development requirements are significantly reduced, making the system accessible to ordinary engineers. Traditional robot programming demands specialized programmers, whereas M-Robots OS offers extensive APIs and low-code toolchains that shorten application development cycles.

Enhanced AI Integration and Industry Benefits

Beyond improvements in speed and compatibility, M-Robots OS features superior AI capabilities. The AI-native robot system incorporates core algorithm libraries for visual recognition, force control, and other functions, autonomously optimizing task strategies and becoming “smarter.”

For enterprises, M-Robots OS’s fully indigenous technology stack eliminates supply disruption concerns, enhancing production stability and security. The low-code development approach reduces technical barriers and enables multi-robot collaboration, eliminating substantial deployment and maintenance expenses. The progression of domestic robot operating systems from individual intelligence to collective intelligence shortens operational cycles and increases industrial productivity.

More broadly, OpenHarmony’s M-Robots OS system offers the global robotics sector a boundary-free Chinese innovation.

“From thousands of isolated machines to millions of interconnected robots, intelligent collaboration will have no boundaries,” envisions Deep OpenHarmony CEO Wang Chenglu, reflecting OpenHarmony’s broader mission.

A Three-Year Roadmap Challenging Global Robotics

On April 9, 2025, at Guangdong Province’s AI and Robotics Industry Innovation Products and Services Press Conference, Wang Chenglu announced an ambitious three-year plan for M-Robots OS that challenges the global robotics industry structure.

By late 2025, OpenHarmony’s M-Robots OS will release version 2.0, implementing commercial testing in industrial production with Guangdong Province partners. Before 2027, M-Robots OS will develop comprehensive developer toolchains for simulation and interaction, promoting implementation across ten benchmark applications in healthcare, education, and other sectors, while concurrently expanding into logistics, energy, and additional industries. Simultaneously, Deep OpenHarmony will establish an open-source community with partners including Leju Robotics and GAC, launching a partnership program to attract traditional developers and engineers into the HarmonyOS ecosystem, creating an integrated industrial cycle from chips and algorithms to applications.

The debut of M-Robots OS holds irreplaceable significance for the OpenHarmony ecosystem, China’s indigenous technology sector, and the global robotics industry.

First, its microsecond-level reaction speed enhances robot operational capabilities and real-time performance in complex precision fields like medicine, accelerating robotics deployment in new scenarios. As the newest member of the OpenHarmony family, M-Robots OS fills a robotics sector gap, completing OpenHarmony’s comprehensive industry coverage.

Second, China’s robotics industry gains enhanced R&D autonomy, freeing operating systems from external control. The “2025 Global Robot Operating System Competitiveness Report” indicates that China’s industrial robot core algorithm libraries have less than 40% autonomous control, with 76% of Chinese robots still dependent on “ROS+Linux” base operating systems. OpenHarmony’s M-Robots OS, with its fully indigenous technology stack, mitigates “technological bottleneck” risks and marks China’s transition from following to parallel competition in robot operating systems.

Challenges and Future Prospects

Long-term, M-Robots OS enables the transition from single-machine intelligence to collective intelligence. Unlike ROS’s Linux dependency, M-Robots OS employs a distributed architecture supporting plug-and-play functionality across heterogeneous devices from different brands, with hard real-time responses below one microsecond and experience sharing and collaborative work enabled by integrated algorithm libraries with computing power optimization.

While M-Robots OS offers tremendous potential, as an emerging technology, it faces several uncertainties.

First, as a newcomer, it lacks the community accumulation and network that ROS has established with over one million developers in its ecosystem. Breaking through this established ecosystem structure requires exceptionally deep technological advantages.

Second, the new technology requires real-world validation across diverse experimental scenarios and complex physical environments, continuously evolving through feedback from actual data. ROS itself evolved through continuous trial and error optimization among millions of community members; M-Robots OS similarly needs repeated upgrades during initial training to truly enter the market.

Finally, international market penetration requires standardization. The global robotics industry lacks unified hardware adaptation standards, and ensuring compatibility with various robot devices for international manufacturer collaboration is essential. Geopolitical and trade barrier influences make rapid progress in this area challenging in the short term.

In essence, OpenHarmony’s M-Robots OS technological innovation provides an autonomously controlled domestic solution, offering unique Chinese insights for global robotics advancement with promising prospects that still require practical validation. Only through continuous cultivation and breakthrough can M-Robots OS advance toward a truly boundaryless intelligent future.