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LCM is a set of libraries and tools for message passing and data marshalling, targeted at real-time systems where high-bandwidth and low latency are critical. It provides a publish/subscribe message passing model and automatic marshalling/unmarshalling code generation with bindings for applications in a variety of programming languages. It was originally designed and used by the MIT DARPA Urban Challenge Team as its message passing system.

LCM is designed for tightly-coupled systems connected via a dedicated local-area network. It is not intended for message passing over the Internet. LCM has been developed for soft real-time systems: its default messaging model permits dropping messages in order to minimize the latency of new messages.

FEATURES:

Low-latency inter-process communication
Efficient broadcast mechanism using UDP Multicast
Provides type-safe message marshaling that automatically detects most types of errors (such as version mismatches between different modules)
User-friendly logging and playback
Essentially unlimited packet size
No centralized "database" or "hub" -- peers communicate directly
No daemons
Supports C, C++, Java, Python, MATLAB, and C#