Speaker
Description
Low-Latency OpenAFS on Ubuntu: Real-Time File Sharing for Robots & Edge Devices
Abstract
Here’s the deal: robots and sensors are everywhere now. Drones, Raspberry Pis, Jetsons, Coral boards - you name it. They’re all spitting out massive amounts of data: LiDAR scans, video feeds, GPR readings. The problem? Getting that data across multiple compute nodes fast, reliably, and without crying about cloud latency.
That’s where OpenAFS comes in. Yeah, it’s this old-school distributed file system that most people forgot about, but when you hack it right, it’s insanely powerful. And when you throw Ubuntu into the mix (on both ARM and x86), you get this battle-tested, offline-friendly, low-latency pipeline for
robotics and embedded systems.
In this talk, I’ll show you how I’ve been using OpenAFS to do things like:
- Stream LiDAR data from drones in real time without choking.
- Collect and sync sensor logs across a fleet of Raspberry Pis.
- Tie it all into ROS so multiple agents share data like they’ve got a
group chat. - Tune the Ubuntu kernel and network stack so the system doesn’t jitter
when milliseconds actually matter.
And yes - we’ll go through real field-tested use cases, like using aerial drones with Ground Penetrating Radar for landslide rescue. It’s not theory. It’s stuff I’ve actually hacked on, crashed on, and debugged at 3AM.
If you care about robotics, real-time systems, or just want to see how an “ancient” distributed file system can unlock futuristic applications, you’ll want to catch this.
What You’ll Take Away
1. How to deploy and configure OpenAFS on Ubuntu for edge environments.
2. Tricks to shave latency off file read/writes on low-power devices.
3. How distributed file systems can simplify robotics and IoT data flows.
4. Why you don’t always need a cloud pipeline to do serious real-time stuff.
Who This Talk Is For
Intermediate Linux nerds, robotics engineers, system builders, or anyone who’s ever had to move a ton of sensor data between edge devices and thought: “Why is this so painful?”
Prereqs
Know your way around Ubuntu.
Basic networking/file systems knowledge.
If you’ve touched a Raspberry Pi or messed with ROS, even better.
Speaker Bio
I’m Utkarsh Maurya - senior at NIT Hamirpur, ex-firmware dev at Cypherock, and currently a kernel dev at a stealth startup. I’ve built drone-based landslide rescue systems with custom GPR, done low-latency sensor networking on Raspberry Pi/Jetson/Coral boards.
I also mess around with bare-metal 6502 computers, blockchain infra, and kernel internals for fun. Basically, I like taking weird open-source tech and pushing it way past what people think it’s for.