Rust in Production

Building autonomous robots that operate safely in the real world is one of the most challenging engineering problems today. When those robots carry sharp blades and work around people, the margin for error is razor-thin. In this episode, we talk to Andrew Tinka from Scythe Robotics about how they use Rust to build autonomous electric mowers for commercial landscaping. We discuss the unique challenges of robotics software, why Rust is an ideal choice for cutting-edge safety-critical systems, and what it takes to keep autonomous machines running smoothly in the field. About Scythe Robotics Scythe Robotics is building autonomous electric mowers for commercial landscaping. Their machines combine advanced sensors, computer vision, and sophisticated path planning to autonomously trim large outdoor spaces while ensuring safety around people and obstacles. By leveraging Rust throughout their software stack, Scythe achieves the reliability and safety guarantees required for autonomous systems breaking new ground in uncontrolled environments. The company is headquartered in Colorado and is reshaping how commercial properties are maintained. About Andrew Tinka Andrew is the Director of Software Engineering at Scythe Robotics, where he drives the development of autonomous systems that power their robotic mowers. He specializes in planning and control for large fleets of mobile robots, with over a decade of experience in multi-agent planning technologies that helped pave the way at Amazon Robotics. Andrew has cultivated deep expertise in building safety-critical software for real-world robotics applications and is passionate about using Rust to create reliable, performant systems. His work covers everything from low-level embedded systems to high-level planning algorithms. Links From The Episode * Ski trails rating [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piste#North_America,_Australia_and_New_Zealand] - A difficulty rating system common in Colorado * NVIDIA Jetson [https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/jetson-modules] - Combined ARM CPU with a GPU for AI workloads at the heart of every Scythe robot * The Rust Book: Variables and Mutability [https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/book/ch03-01-variables-and-mutability.html#variables-and-mutability] - Immutability is the default in Rust * Jon Gjengset: Sguaba [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kESBAiTYMoQ] - A type safe spatial maths library * The Rust Book: Inheritance as a Type System and as Code Sharing [https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/book/ch18-01-what-is-oo.html#inheritance-as-a-type-system-and-as-code-sharing] - Unlike Java, Rust doesn't have inheritance * Using {..Default::default} when creating structs [https://rust-unofficial.github.io/patterns/idioms/default.html] - The alternative is to initialize each field explicitly * The Rust Book: Refutability [https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/book/ch19-02-refutability.html] - Rust tells you when you forgot something * Clippy [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-clippy] - Rust's official linter * Deterministic fleet management for autonomous mobile robots using Rust - Andy Brinkmeyer from Arculus [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao-CLgci-e8] - 2024 Oxidize warehouse robot talk with deterministic testing * ROS [https://www.ros.org/] - The Robot Operating System * Ractor [https://slawlor.github.io/ractor/] - A good modern actor framework * Rain: Cancelling Async Rust [https://youtu.be/zrv5Cy1R7r4] - RustConf 2025 talk with many examples of pitfalls Official Links * Scythe Robotics [https://scytherobotics.com/] * Scythe on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/scythe-robotics/] * Scythe on GitHub [https://github.com/scythe-robotics] * Andrew Tinka on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewtinka/]

Are you one of over 240 million subscribers of Amazon's Prime Video service? If so, you might be surprised to learn that much of the infrastructure behind Prime Video is built using Rust. They use a single codebase for media players, game consoles, and tablets. In this episode, we sit down with Alexandru Ene, a Principal Engineer at Amazon, to discuss how Rust is used at Prime Video, the challenges they face in building a global streaming service, and the benefits of using Rust for their backend systems. About Prime Video Prime Video is a streaming service offered by Amazon that provides a wide range of movies, TV shows, and original content to its subscribers. With over 240 million subscribers worldwide, Prime Video is one of the largest streaming platforms in the world. In addition to its vast content library, Prime Video also offers features such as offline viewing, 4K streaming, and support for multiple devices. On the backend, Prime Video relies on a variety of technologies to deliver its content, including Rust, which is used for building high-performance and reliable systems that can handle the demands of a global audience. About Alexandru Ene Alexandru worked on the transition of Prime Video's user interface from JavaScript to Rust. He has been with Amazon for over 8 years and previously worked at companies like Ubisoft and EA. He has a background in computer science and is an active open source maintainer. Alexandru lives in London. Links From The Episode * Ferris Makes Emulators Ep.001 - The Journey Begins [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsi9HPcyrU8] - First episode of a famous series where Jake Taylor wrote a Nintendo 64 emulator in Rust from scratch * CMake [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMake] - Very common build system used in C++ applications * Conan [https://conan.io/] - C++ Package Manager community project * C++ Smart Pointers [https://ericlippert.com/2003/09/16/smart-pointers-are-too-smart/] - Still a footgun * Herb Sutter: The Free Lunch Is Over [http://gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm] - The seminal 2005 paper that highlights the importance of concurrency, well past C++'s mainstream adoption * Rust in Production: cURL [https://corrode.dev/podcast/s02e01-curl/] - Baseline library used everywhere, written in C, but performant and safe * Prime Video Platforms [https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16775794011] - One app runs on all of these * WebAssembly (WASM) [https://webassembly.org/] - Enabling Rust code with good performance that you can still download and run like JavaScript, avoiding the need for firmware updates on some devices * Entity Component System [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_component_system] - Used in the UI Rust code for pages in the app * Bevy [https://bevy.org/] - Game engine written in Rust * Leptos [https://www.leptos.dev/] - UI framework that makes reactive programming in Rust easier * tokio [https://tokio.rs/] - The de facto standard async runtime for Rust * SIMD [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_instruction,_multiple_data] - A nice feature set some CPUs support * WebAssembly Micro Runtime [https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasm-micro-runtime] - A tiny WASM runtime well suited for IoT platforms * WebAssembly Working Group [https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/wasm/] Official Links * Amazon Prime Video [https://www.primevideo.com] * Rust & WASM for UI: Faster Prime Video on ANY Device - Alexandru Ene, QCon San Francisco 2024 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wcOovoDFMI] * Alexandru Ene on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexene0x0a/] * Alexandru's Blog [https://alexene.dev] * Alexandru Ene on GitHub [https://github.com/AlexEne]

It’s time for another recap including our highlights of Season 4. We’ve been at this for a while now (four seasons, and 32 episodes to be exact). We had guests from a wide range of industries: from Microsoft to Astral, and from password managers to satellite systems. This time, it’s all about using Rust for foundational software, which is software that is critical to a team or even an entire organization. Rust is a great fit for this type of software! We’ll take a break for the summer. In the meantime, we encourage you to catch up on any episodes you might have missed, and to check out the links below. And if you’re interested in using Rust for your own projects, check out our dedicated learn [https://corrode.dev/learn/] page for additional content about Rust adoption or reach out to us [https://corrode.dev/services] directly for a chat. Links From The Episode * 10 Years of Stable Rust: An Infrastructure Story [https://rustfoundation.org/media/10-years-of-stable-rust-an-infrastructure-story/] - Graydon Hoare’s reflection on Rust’s 10th anniversary * Rust For Foundational Software [https://corrode.dev/blog/foundational-software/] - Matthias’ blog post on Rust’s role in foundational software About Us * Simon Brüggen (M3t0r) on GitHub [https://github.com/M3t0r] * Simon Brüggen (M3t0r) on Mastodon [https://hachyderm.io/@m3t0r] * Matthias Endler on Mastodon [https://mastodon.social/@mre] * About corrode Rust Consulting [https://corrode.dev/about] * ‘Rust in Production’ Podcast on Apple [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rust-in-production/id1720771330] * ‘Rust in Production’ Podcast on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0Hf6gWrzpSzXp1X0cebbsT] All Episodes of Season 4 If you missed any of the previous episodes, now is a great time to catch up: * Episode 1: Microsoft with Victor Ciura [https://corrode.dev/podcast/s04e01-microsoft] * Episode 2: Svix with Tom Hacohen [https://corrode.dev/podcast/s04e02-svix] * Episode 3: Astral with Charlie Marsh [https://corrode.dev/podcast/s04e03-astral] * Episode 4: Rust with Niko Matsakis [https://corrode.dev/podcast/s04e04-rust] * Episode 5: Tembo with Adam Hendel [https://corrode.dev/podcast/s04e05-tembo] * Episode 6: 1Password with Andrew Burkhart [https://corrode.dev/podcast/s04e06-1password] * Episode 7: KSAT with Vegard Sandengen [https://corrode.dev/podcast/s04e07-ksat] Credits Podcast production by Simon Brüggen (M3t0r) [https://m3t0r.de/]. We would like to thank the guests for their time and insights. We would also like to thank you, the listener for your support and feedback. Hosting and producing a podcast is a lot of work, but it’s worth it when we hear from you. Here’s to another great season!

As a kid, I was always fascinated by space tech. That fascination has only grown as I've learned more about the engineering challenges involved in space exploration. In this episode, we talk to Vegard Sandengen, a Rust engineer at KSAT, a company that provides ground station services for satellites. They use Rust to manage the data flow from hundreds of satellites, ensuring that data is received, processed, and stored efficiently. This data is then made available to customers around the world, enabling them to make informed decisions based on real-time satellite data. We dive deep into the technical challenges of building reliable, high-performance systems that operate 24/7 to capture and process satellite data. Vegard shares insights into why Rust was chosen for these mission-critical systems, how they handle the massive scale of data processing, and the unique reliability requirements when dealing with space-based infrastructure. From ground station automation to data pipeline optimization, this conversation explores how modern systems programming languages are enabling the next generation of space technology infrastructure. About KSAT KSAT, or Kongsberg Satellite Services, is a global leader in providing ground station services for satellites. The company slogan is "We Connect Space And Earth," and their mission-critical services are used by customers around the world to access satellite data for a wide range of applications, including weather monitoring, environmental research, and disaster response. About Vegard Sandengen Vegard Sandengen is a Rust engineer at KSAT, where he works on the company's data management systems. He has a Master's degree in computer science and has been working in the space industry for several years. At KSAT, Vegard focuses on building high-performance data processing pipelines that handle satellite telemetry and payload data from ground stations around the world. His work involves optimizing real-time data flows and ensuring system reliability for mission-critical space operations. Links From The Episode * SpaceX [https://www.spacex.com/] - Private space exploration company revolutionizing satellite launches * CCSDS [https://ccsds.org/] - Space data systems standardization body * Ground Station [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_station] * Polar Orbit [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_orbit] - Orbit with usually limited ground station visibility * TrollSat [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_Satellite_Station] - Remote Ground Station in Antarctica * OpenStack [https://www.openstack.org/] - Build-your-own-cloud software stack * RustConf 2024: K2 Space Lightning Talk [https://youtu.be/rME_t6Jn_Kw?list=PL2b0df3jKKiTWZeF7cip6ZUsaVXxWioRi&t=736] - K2 Space's sponsored lightning talk, talking about 100% Rust based satellites * K2 Space [https://www.k2space.com/] - Space company building satellites entirely in Rust * Blue Origin [https://www.blueorigin.com/] - Space exploration company focused on reusable rockets * Rocket Lab [https://www.rocketlabusa.com/] - Small satellite launch provider * AWS Ground Station [https://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/] - Cloud-based satellite ground station service * Strangler Pattern [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangler_fig_pattern] - A software design pattern to replace legacy applications step-by-step * Rust by Example: New Type Idiom [https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by-example/generics/new_types.html] - Creating new wrapper types to leverage Rust's type system guarantees for correct code * serde [https://serde.rs/] - Serialization and deserialization framework for Rust * utoipa [https://github.com/juhaku/utoipa] - OpenAPI specification generation from Rust code * serde-json [https://github.com/serde-rs/json] - The go-to solution for parsing JSON in Rust * axum [https://github.com/tokio-rs/axum] - Ergonomic web framework built on tokio and tower * sqlx [https://github.com/launchbadge/sqlx] - Async SQL toolkit with compile-time checked queries * rayon [https://github.com/rayon-rs/rayon] - Data parallelism library for Rust * tokio [https://tokio.rs/] - Asynchronous runtime for Rust applications * tokio-console [https://github.com/tokio-rs/console] - Debugger for async Rust applications * tracing [https://tracing.rs/] - Application-level tracing framework for async-aware diagnostics * W3C Trace Context [https://www.w3.org/TR/trace-context/] - Standard for distributed tracing context propagation * OpenTelemetry [https://opentelemetry.io/] - Observability framework for distributed systems * Honeycomb [https://www.honeycomb.io/] - Observability platform for complex distributed systems * Azure Application Insights [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/app/app-insights-overview] - Application performance monitoring service Official Links * KSAT [https://www.ksat.no/] * Vegard on GitHub [https://github.com/veeg]

Handling secrets is extremely hard. You have to keep them safe (obviously), while at the same time you need to integrate with a ton of different systems and always provide a great user-experience, because otherwise people will just find a way around your system. When talking to peers, a lot of people mention 1Password as a company that nailed this balance. In today's episode, I talk to Andrew about how 1Password uses Rust to build critical systems that must never fail, how Rust helps them handle secrets for millions of users, and the lessons they learned when adopting Rust in their stack. About 1Password 1Password is a password manager that helps users securely store and manage their passwords, credit card information, and other sensitive data. It provides a user-friendly interface and strong security features to protect users' secrets across multiple devices. About Andrew Burkhart Andrew is a Senior Rust Developer at 1Password in the Product Foundations org, on the Frameworks team and specifically on the Core Platform squad handling the asynchronous frameworks other developers use to build features (i.e. requests into the Rust core from the Native clients, data sync, etc.). He specifically specialized in that synchronization process, getting data federated from cloud to clients to native apps and back. Links From The Episode * Backend for Frontend Pattern [https://samnewman.io/patterns/architectural/bff/] - Architectural pattern for creating dedicated backends for specific frontends * typeshare [https://github.com/1Password/typeshare] - Generate types for multiple languages from Rust code * zeroizing-alloc [https://github.com/1Password/zeroizing-alloc] - 1Password's minimal secure heap zero-on-free implementation for Rust * arboard [https://github.com/1Password/arboard] - Cross-platform clipboard manager written in Rust * passkey-rs [https://github.com/1password/passkey-rs] - Pure Rust implementation of the WebAuthn Passkey specification * WebAssembly (WASM) [https://webassembly.org/] - Binary instruction format for portable execution across platforms * tokio [https://tokio.rs/] - The de facto standard async runtime for Rust * Clippy [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-clippy] - A collection of lints to catch common mistakes in Rust * cargo-deny [https://github.com/EmbarkStudios/cargo-deny] - Cargo plugin for linting dependencies, licenses, and security advisories * Nix [https://nixos.org/] - Purely functional package manager for reproducible builds * Nix Flakes [https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Flakes] - Experimental feature for hermetic, reproducible Nix builds * direnv [https://direnv.net/] - Load and unload environment variables based on current directory * ACM: Spotify Guilds [https://cacm.acm.org/research/spotify-guilds/] - A study into Spotify's Agile Model's Guilds * axum [https://github.com/tokio-rs/axum] - Ergonomic and modular web framework built on tokio and tower * tower [https://github.com/tower-rs/tower] - Library for building robust networking clients and servers * tracing [https://github.com/tokio-rs/tracing] - Application-level tracing framework for async-aware diagnostics * rusqlite [https://github.com/rusqlite/rusqlite] - Ergonomic wrapper for SQLite in Rust * mockall [https://docs.rs/mockall/latest/mockall/] - Powerful mock object library for Rust * pretty_assertions [https://docs.rs/pretty_assertions/latest/pretty_assertions/] - Better assertion macros with colored diff output * neon [https://neon-rs.dev/] - Library for writing native Node.js modules in Rust * nom-supreme [https://docs.rs/nom-supreme/latest/nom_supreme/] - Parser combinator additions and utilities for nom * crane [https://github.com/ipetkov/crane] - Nix library for building Cargo projects * Rust in Production: Zed [https://github.com/corrode/corrode.github.io/blob/80f4bef34c80f2f98b4e08592893466e9fd85e2b/podcast/s03e01-zed] - High-performance code editor built in Rust * tokio-console [https://github.com/tokio-rs/console] - Debugger for async Rust programs using tokio * Rust Atomics and Locks by Mara Bos [https://marabos.nl/atomics/] - Free online book about low-level concurrency in Rust * The Rust Programming Language (Brown University Edition) [https://rust-book.cs.brown.edu/] - Interactive version of the Rust Book with quizzes * Rustlings [https://github.com/rust-lang/rustlings] - Small exercises to get you used to reading and writing Rust code Official Links * 1Password [https://1password.com/] * Andrew on GitHub [https://github.com/DrewBurkhart] * Andrew on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewburkhartdev/]