FINECYCLE is a hardware-virtualization-based management paradigm designed to streamline the deployment and development of robotic applications. By encapsulating the operating system, development environments, dependencies, and applications into unified Robotic Images, FINECYCLE achieves a zero-configuration, closed-loop workflow: Deploy → Develop → Restore → Redeploy.
To operationalize the FINECYCLE paradigm, you need to set up a centralized storage server and configure the target robotic hosts. We utilize KVM and Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) as the underlying hypervisor management layer.
The central server acts as a unified repository for robotic images and provides high-performance computational resources.
- Installation: Install Proxmox VE (PVE) on the server hardware.
- Storage Configuration: Configure a shared storage pool (e.g., NFS, Ceph, or ZFS) within PVE to host the images.
- ISO Repository Setup: Upload the open-source Clonezilla ISO to the
localISO storage of the PVE node. - Baseline VM Initialization: Following the procedure in Standard Image Template, instantiate at least one baseline Virtual Machine.
Virtualized hosts are robotic computing units (e.g., Mini PCs) equipped with a hypervisor layer.
- Installation: Install Proxmox VE on the host and join it to the central server's PVE Cluster.
- Network Preparation: Since mobile robots typically rely on Wi-Fi, an additional USB wireless network card is required to provide network connectivity for the VMs. Configure the wireless interface based on
WIRELESS_TEMPLATEinconfigs/netconf_templates.py.
Bare-metal hosts are conventional robotic platforms without a virtualization layer.
- Setup: No hypervisor installation is required. Ensure the host architecture is compatible (e.g., x86_64) and prepare a Clonezilla live USB for disk cloning.
FINECYCLE supports a bidirectional image lifecycle: deploying images from server to robot, developing directly on the deployed environment, and restoring finalized images back to the server. The system supports two deployment pipelines — baremetal pipeline for bare-metal hosts, and pve pipeline for virtualized hosts.
A temporary physical Ethernet connection to the robotic host is required during deployment and restoration.
For detailed instructions on deployment commands, development workflows, and automated scripts, please refer to the guides in the document/ folder:
| Guide | Language |
|---|---|
document/interactive_runner_guide.en.md |
English |
document/interactive_runner_guide.zh-CN.md |
简体中文 |
A standardized robotic platform that encapsulates the operating system, development environment, and dependencies. Clone the pre-built image to rapidly deploy a ready-to-use environment.
- Pre-configured environment: Includes OS, drivers, middleware, and libraries.
- Rapid deployment: Clone the standardized disk image directly without manual installation.
- Cross-host support: Works on both bare-metal and virtualized hosts.
- Boot your host from the Clonezilla live environment (ISO mount for VM, live USB for bare-metal).
- Enter the WebDAV URL: FineCycle WebDAV
- Choose device-image mode:
FineStdImg-VMfor virtualized hosts orFineStdImg-Diskfor bare-metal hosts. - Follow the Clonezilla Tutorial to clone the image from WebDAV to your local disk.
- Boot into the system and start developing.
This project is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.
If you find this work helpful in your research, please cite our paper:
@inproceedings{wang2026finecycle,
title={FINECYCLE: Towards a Full-Cycle Management Paradigm for Robotic Deployment and Development},
author={Wang, Haolin and Xi, Wang and Zhu, Zhiyuan and Fang, Chongrong and He, Jianping},
booktitle={IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
year={2026}
}