Robots, cars, compilers, and the glue holding it all together.

In this issue: how Rust is powering real-world robotics at Copper, mobility systems at Toyota, and how the Rust Infra Team keeps your builds and crates running like clockwork.

Let's dive in.

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Woven by Toyota: Rust in Real-World Mobility

I watched the interview with Pete LeVasseur, linked via Filtra, and it's a good reminder that Rust isn't just winning in dev tools and backend systems. Woven by Toyota is using it to push forward the future of mobility, real cars, real data, real-time safety. That's a much harder problem space than web apps, and hearing engineers talk about Rust in that context is refreshing.

The main theme that stood out is how Rust enables predictability and correctness in critical systems. When you're building platforms that interact with physical environments, vehicles, sensors, city infrastructure, you can't afford runtime surprises. Rust's compile-time guarantees aren't just "nice to have," they become operational necessities.

A second takeaway is the mindset shift: Toyota isn't just a car company anymore. They're treating mobility as a software problem. Rust helps them think in terms of components, safety boundaries, and modular runtimes that can evolve over time. It shows how Rust is slowly embedding itself into domains where reliability once meant C and C++ were the only options.

If you want to see how Rust is used when hardware meets mobility at scale, this interview is worth the time.

Takeaways:

• Rust is gaining traction in industries where safety and correctness are non-negotiable.
• Predictability at compile time is becoming a competitive advantage.
• Toyota is treating mobility as a modular, evolving software system.
• Real-world Rust adoption is accelerating beyond "developer hype" into operational use.

Copper Robotics: Rust in the Driver's Seat

When I spoke with Guillaume Binet, founder of Copper Robotics, it was clear this wasn't just another robotics SDK. Copper is a rethink of how robots are programmed, and it's built from the ground up in Rust.

The core idea is simple: if a robot receives the same sensor input, it should always produce the same output. Obvious? Maybe. But in practice, that level of determinism is surprisingly hard to achieve, especially with traditional robotics stacks. With ROS, for example, deterministically replaying logs is nearly impossible. Copper, by contrast, guarantees deterministic replay of logged data, which makes debugging and validation dramatically easier.

It's not just about determinism, though. ROS also comes with heavy dependencies, often tied to a specific Ubuntu version. That adds friction, or forces teams to containerize with Docker just to stay sane. C++ by itself isn't the issue, there are deterministic runtimes out there, but most are proprietary and come with their own baggage. Rust helps sidestep all of that. It gives you reliable, portable performance and reduces your reliance on OS-level quirks.

Copper takes full advantage of Rust's strengths. It gives you memory safety without garbage collection, fearless concurrency, and zero-cost abstractions. But more than that, it lets developers, especially those with backgrounds in math or physics, write expressive, high-level logic using functional patterns that feel familiar to anyone coming from Python. That kind of clarity is rare in robotics, and sorely needed.

Unlike ROS, which drags along databases and service layers (great for cloud services, not for real-time embedded systems), Copper is built for the edge. It runs lean. It runs fast. And it runs where it matters: from simulation to production, without needing to rewrite or re-architect.

Copper isn't trying to be everything. It's focused. It solves real problems. And it uses Rust not because it's cool, but because it's the best tool for the job.

If you're building robotics software, or thinking about it, this is a project worth checking out. The GitHub repo is open and the community is growing.

It's a great example of Rust moving robotics forward, not just in theory, but in production.

Rust Infrastructure: The Unsung Backbone

In a recent interview, Jan David Nose from the Infrastructure Team of the Rust Project shared what keeps the ecosystem running behind the scenes. From CI pipelines to crate delivery, the Infra Team handles the critical stuff that makes Rust feel smooth and reliable—builds, testing, deploys, and tooling.

One standout is Crater, Rust's large-scale regression tester. It checks public crates against compiler changes to catch breakage early, a key part of maintaining Rust's famously stable ecosystem.

But with Rust's growing popularity, challenges scale too: millions of build-minutes a month, platform support, and supply chain security are now central concerns.

So next time cargo build just works, now you know who to thank.

Snippets

• Ubuntu Migrating to Rust: uutils and sudo-rs Shipping by Default Lessons learned from Canonical's VP of Engineering on bringing Rust utilities to Ubuntu by default.

• Some Neat Things About Rust You Might Not Know Community-shared lesser-known Rust features and tips.

• Interview: Christian Legnitto, Maintainer of rust-gpu and rust-cuda Deep dive into GPU programming with Rust and the challenges of maintaining these cutting-edge projects.

We are thrilled to have you as part of our growing community of Rust enthusiasts! If you found value in this newsletter, don't keep it to yourself — share it with your network and let's grow the Rust community together.

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Cheers,
Bob Peters

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