SOFTrobots OS
Operating system for robots · 64-bit ARM · version 0.15.0
SOFTrobots OS is an operating system for robots built entirely on its own – written from the ground up in Embedded Swift, without Linux, without POSIX, without legacy. Real time, emergency stop and security sit in the core, not on top.
Experimental. Never put important data into it. Everything can change – formats, API and data can be lost with an update.
Measured in SOFTrobotsVM on an Apple M3 Pro, version 0.15.0: start, real time and encryption in the run of 8 Nov 2026 (boot log: “Hello” at 0.661 s), emergency stop according to the handbook (phase 10). Details and sources under Speed.
BEWARE
OF THE DOG
Buddy, the watchdog of SOFTrobots OS, bites programs that want more memory than they announced.
DANGER: Never use it for real things. Not for real robots, machines, vehicles, devices or important data – or he bites you, too.
SOFTrobots OS is young: its very first start was on 28 October 2026. It is fast, it is well thought out – and, to be honest, it is still an experiment. Anyone who tries it should know that.
Experimental. Never put important data into it. Everything can change – formats, API and data can be lost with an update.
In short: for marvelling, trying out and thinking along. Not for a robot that should be working in production tomorrow.
The system
About 70 % robots, about 30 % ordinary programs such as servers. Kernel, drivers, services and programs are written in Embedded Swift; C exists only in the EFI loader, assembly only where nothing else works.
A scheduler per core, tickless, with EDF and admission control. The last core is reserved for real time. Programs state period, budget and reaction in their signed manifest – if the contract does not fit, the program does not even start.
Stops all actuators at once – through the always visible button in the menu bar, ⌘+Esc (even during the start animation) or the status page of Server. Programs never reach a motor or bus directly: the actuator service limits every movement.
Risky parts such as USB and graphics run as isolated services in user mode. USB only with an allow-list: HID, CDC-ACM, UVC and signed vendor drivers – any other interface rejects the whole device.
A file system of its own: copy-on-write, B+ trees, CRC-32C on everything, AES-256-GCM per block. After a power cut always the old or the new state, never anything in between. Snapshots every 15 minutes – the time slider in Files shows older states.
The database lives in the file system: tables as shapes, the kernel checks every row, indexes, queries, SQL in the Console. Plus series for telemetry and a flight recorder that saves the last seconds at an emergency stop.
A shape language of its own (.shape): one definition describes the API, the checking code in the kernel, database tables, rings and network. Published fields keep their place.
A script language of its own, compiled inside the system. Develop checks at every key, simulates events, compiles to ARM64 code with “Fast” – and proves real time: the compiler counts the worst-case cycles and starts only what fits into 80 % of the period. Every line shows its time: the proved worst case before the start (e.g. ≤ 13.4 µs), and while it runs how often it ran and how long it took – down to nanoseconds.
A little dog on the desktop that watches the logs by rules and reports when something goes wrong. “Ask Claude” in his speech bubble sends the finding only on a click. He also bites programs that take more memory than they announced. In Settings: on, quiet or off.
Object detection with our own int8 inference and signed models, plus AprilTag, colour blobs and motion. The pictures stay on the device; results go to robot programs as a ring.
Files with a time slider, Web (a reading browser without JavaScript and without cookies), Video (WebM with VP9 and Opus, recording), Sound (records FLAC and WAV), Reader (shows, searches and marks PDF), Database, Benchmark, Activity, Console, Settings, Server, Ask.
Only door 443 (everything behind the login) and door 80 (redirect), no public web server. The robot's own root authority, access by invitation. From outside through the home router's VPN.
A network stack in Swift: IPv6 first, IPv4, TCP with SACK and CUBIC, mDNS. Only TLS 1.3, names only through DNS over HTTPS, time through NTS. A configurable firewall is not needed: a port without a listener does not answer at all.
The film
From an empty folder on 28 October to today: code in time-lapse, every decision and every failure, measured instead of guessed. Then all 16 programs in real recordings – Develop with its time per line, Web, PDF, ZIP, memory –, how small the whole system is, the 35 formats with their speeds, why a program compiled here runs only here, Big Buck Bunny in full HD on our own VP9 decoder, and where we can still do better. With narration and subtitles, 5:06.
What it looks like
Only 2D, on purpose: windows, menus, dock, cards – and the red E-STOP always at the top right. Light and dark, sharp on large screens.
Speed
The Benchmark program measures every building block on its own: 80 measurements in 15 areas, each with a fixed number, so that runs of all versions stay comparable. After every update it measures by itself.
1 s
second
1 s
about one heartbeat
1 ms
millisecond
0.001 s · one thousandth
a blink takes 100 to 400 ms; a video frame at 60 frames per second has 16.7 ms
1 µs
microsecond
0.000 001 s · one millionth
light travels 300 metres in 1 µs
1 ns
nanosecond
0.000 000 001 s · one billionth
light travels 30 centimetres in 1 ns, the length of a ruler
To picture it: if a nanosecond lasted as long as a second, a real second would last almost 32 years. A context switch of 0.3 µs is so short that light gets only 90 metres in that time.
From power-on to “Hello from the kernel.”. Firmware and loader take about 0.5 s of that, the kernel itself about 90 ms. Nothing on the boot path waits for the network; a test fails if “Hello” comes later than 1.0 s.
Seconds after power-on, axis up to 1.2 s. Grey: firmware and loader; amber: SOFTrobots OS.
| Measurement | Measured | Target | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| IRQ latency, mean | 51.0 ns | < 10 µs | met |
| IRQ latency, worst | 375 ns | < 10 µs | met |
| Context switch | 0.3 µs | < 2 µs | met |
| Real-time wake-up 1 ms, mean | 1.1 µs | < 20 µs | met |
| Real-time wake-up, worst | 44.3 µs | < 20 µs | missed in 1 of 3 runs (otherwise 6.1 and 6.8 µs) |
| Message there and back (IPC) | 1.5 µs | < 1 µs | narrowly missed |
We also show what is not good enough yet. The runs were made while Benchmark was starting – so under load.
The rule in the workshop: one change at a time, measure before and after – what brings nothing is removed again.
57 MB video from Wikimedia, Mac on Wi-Fi, round trip about 35 ms. Change: larger receive windows for long connections.
57 MB in 4.1 s instead of about 21 s – 5 times faster. Measured on 10 Nov 2026.
VP9 video at 360p and 60 frames per second. Change: decode the next pictures already in the pauses in between.
720p also runs at 60 of 60, and since 11 Nov 1080p plays smoothly in the VM too: 10.3 ms per picture, 16.7 ms allowed. Measured on 10 and 11 Nov 2026.
| Measurement | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Disk encryption AES-256-GCM, seal / open | 3,197 / 2,945 MB/s | our own assembly with the ARM crypto instructions |
| Memory copy / fill (32 MiB) | 3,811 / 5,573 MB/s | Benchmark run |
| NVMe sequential read / write | 1,073 / 443 MB/s | reads come from the Mac's page cache |
| File system in the kernel: write 4 MiB + commit / read + check | 204 / 521 MB/s | kernel measurement at start |
| Insert 1,000 rows into SOFTrobotsDB (on disk) | 22.2 ms | through the system calls from a program |
| Messages through a channel | 1.8 M/s | zero-copy rings between two programs |
| TLS 1.3 handshake / HTTPS page (example.com) | 79.7 / 317 ms | over the internet |
Source: technical datasheet, version 0.15.0. Measured in SOFTrobotsVM (Virtualization.framework, 4 virtual CPUs, 4 GiB RAM) on an Apple M3 Pro (Mac15,7), 36 GB, macOS 27.0.1; Benchmark run of 8 Nov 2026 after F142 and F143, product image, quiet Mac. Downloads and video: series of 10 Nov 2026. Real robot hardware has not been measured yet, and VM numbers on a Mac cannot be compared directly with measurements of other systems on real hardware. All 80 measurements in the datasheet.
Small
Kernel, drivers, file system, database, network with TLS 1.3, the desktop, 30 programs, the compiler of Develop and example files (pictures, sounds, a database with 100,000 rows). Unpacked it takes 86 MB.
Measured with du and diskutil on the developer's Mac (macOS 27.0.1), 11 Nov 2026. Fair to say: Mac programs also use the libraries macOS brings along (Preview itself is 6.3 MB), so compare the last line: the whole of macOS against the whole of SOFTrobots OS – about 160 times.
No Linux, no POSIX, no compatibility with anything old: programs talk to the kernel directly, with 14 system calls.
Embedded Swift from the kernel to the programs, without a runtime to carry along. C only in the EFI loader, assembly only where nothing else works.
35 formats and codecs, each read by our own code inside the program that needs it – no borrowed library, nothing twice.
One change at a time, measured before and after; what brings nothing is removed again. That keeps it small as well as fast.
File formats
Each decoder runs inside the program that needs it, never in the kernel: a malicious file can at most hit that one program. Speeds measured in SOFTrobotsVM unless marked.
Not yet: HEIC/HEIF, AVIF, JPEG 2000 (grey in PDFs), JPEG XL, camera RAW, MP4/H.264. All 35 with their limits in the datasheet.
Security
No POSIX layer, no compatibility with old systems – so no old attack surface either.
How the system is built
SOFTrobots OS is written by an AI programming agent – Claude by Anthropic. It plans, programs, tests, measures and documents on its own. The boss sets the direction, looks at drafts before anything is rebuilt, and decides what stays.
Status and road ahead
As a core for robots, SOFTrobots OS is fast, secure and well thought out in the VM. What it lacks is what only time and real hardware bring: drivers, maturity, an ecosystem and measurements on the target device.
Linux and Windows know tens of thousands of devices, QNX has decades of experience and certifications, ROS 2 brings thousands of packages. Today SOFTrobots OS knows only virtual devices, has no POSIX layer on purpose, and no Bluetooth, no QUIC/HTTP/3, no 3D graphics and only one user yet.
Under construction
Real numbers, also where they are not good yet.
Try the preview
A time-limited preview for Macs with Apple silicon: an app and the finished system. Unpack, start, set up the robot – “Hello from the kernel.” comes after 0.66 seconds (measured on an M3 Pro).
softrobots.com
New system versions come as signed packages. The system writes them into the system copy not in use, tries them at the next start – and goes back by itself if something does not work.
Download service in preparation
Updates are experimental, too: formats, API and data can change or be lost.
softrobots-0.x.srupdate Kernel + Systemvolume signature: Ed25519 → into the inactive copy (A/B) → restart, trial run → “Hello” reached? stays → 3 failed starts? back to the old
Contact
Questions, ideas, a robot that deserves a new operating system – write to us.