Protocol Buffers

Google's open-source, language-neutral format for serializing structured data compactly and quickly.

Protobuf (Protocol Buffers) is a data serialization mechanism developed by Google and open-sourced in 2008. Developers first define a message's structure — field names, types, and numeric tags — in a .proto file, then use the protoc compiler to generate reading and writing code for languages such as C++, Python, and Go; the data itself is transmitted and stored in a compact binary format. Compared with JSON, it uses less bandwidth, parses faster, and lets old and new versions of a message stay compatible after fields are added. It's the default interface description and encoding format for gRPC, and is also supported by robotics tools such as the MCAP logging format and Foxglove, making it common for communication between a robot and the cloud or an inference server.

ExampleWhen deploying a policy as a remote inference service, define the “image + joint state → action chunk” request and response format in a .proto file, then call it over gRPC.

Also called

Protobuf, proto

Related

gRPC Remote Procedure Calls · Message (msg / srv / action interface) · MCAP · Middleware · ZeroMQ · Lightweight Communications and Marshalling (LCM)

Sources

Protocol Buffers 官方文档 (Chinese)