[vmayoral]

Well said. Robotics is indeed the art of system integration and such remains (and will) one the biggest tech hurdles.

We wrote about this, and raised-funding, and worked for years on it. Hell, we even created an extension of ROS for it called the "Hardware Robot Operating System" (H-ROS) that aimed to address many of these issues you describe using ROS as the common language and Programmable Logic (FPGAs) to deal with physical interfaces. More on this at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8046383.

Problem was that the market didn't really accept it. I still believe on the tech problem landscape in here. I'm just not so sure anymore if there's any real market/business for such a solution. After all, vendor lock-ins are great business, and generate business.