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Fabric

Fabric is a ROS2 package that provides a system to coordinate and manage various capabilities as defined by the Capabilities2 framework. This package extends the functionality of the Capabilities2 package to implement a Finite State Machine based on capabilities. It is designed to parse an execution plan given via an XML file and identify connections between various capabilities in the system which would be relayed back to Capabilities2 framework to execute.

Currently the system supports 4 control functions:

  • sequential: triggers child runners in sequence.
  • parallel_all: waits for all child branches to report success before proceeding.
  • parallel_any: proceeds when any child branch reports success.
  • recovery: defines a recovery branch that can be triggered on failure.

Features

  • Implements a Partially Incomplete Finite State Machine based on the XML execution plan
  • Validates the XML plan for compatibility with robot.
  • Parses XML-based plans and identifies connections between capabilities.
  • Informs capabilities2 framework regarding the capability connections and orchestrate a FSM.

Read more about,

Setting the Fabric

Clone the repo into a workspace

mkdir -p workspace/src
cd workspace/src
git clone https://github.com/CollaborativeRoboticsLab/fabric.git
cd ..
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y

Setup the capabilities2 framework as instructed.

Launching fabric

The fabric_server/plans/default.xml file is the default example plan. New plans can be added there or stored anywhere else on disk.

The fabric_server/config/fabric.yaml file configures the parser plugin, validation plugin, and capability client settings. The plan path itself is provided by the launch file.

Launch with the packaged default plan:

source install/setup.bash
ros2 launch fabric_server fabric.launch.py

Launch with a different packaged plan by filename:

source install/setup.bash
ros2 launch fabric_server fabric.launch.py filename:=default.xml

Launch with an explicit plan path:

source install/setup.bash
ros2 launch fabric_server fabric.launch.py plan_file_path:=/absolute/path/to/plan.xml

Citation

If you use this work in an academic context, please cite the following publication(s):

@misc{ratnayake2026gpsfsm,
  title={A Generative Partially Specified Finite State Machine Approach to Complex Behaviour Planning}, 
  author={Kalana Ratnayake and Michael Pritchard and David Hinwood and Maleen Jayasuriya and Damith Herath},
  year={2026},
  eprint={2607.15674},
  archivePrefix={arXiv},
  primaryClass={cs.RO},
  url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.15674}, 
}