Hey all — I’ve been working on an experimental interoperability project called PlaceAuth, and I just pushed out SPP v0.3.0.
The basic idea is pretty simple: a place defines the requirements for operating there, a machine demonstrates that it meets them, and SPP uses that evidence to determine what kind of operating profile it should get.
Over the last few releases I’ve been trying to move this from “interesting concept” into something that can actually be implemented and tested outside of one codebase. v0.3 adds versioned requirement semantics, signed Place Packages, external conformance providers, machine-readable decision traces, profile lifecycle handling, and a facility-side access-control boundary.
I’ve also been validating it against real robotics middleware where I can. On Nav2, an SPP-derived operating profile changed commanded speed from 1.0 m/s to 0.5 m/s under the same active FollowPath goal. On Open-RMF Humble, I got a real registered test robot and delivery bids through FleetUpdateHandle.consider_delivery_requests, with an ADMITTED profile producing a proposal and a DENIED profile blocking it.
I’m posting here because I’m at the point where outside criticism is probably more useful than me continuing to build in a vacuum.
A few things I’d especially like opinions on:
- Does SPP actually sit at a useful interoperability boundary, or is some of this better handled elsewhere?
- Does selective requalification when a robot moves between spaces make operational sense?
- Where do you think the trust model is weakest?
- Are the Place Package / requirement / provider contracts narrow enough to be implemented independently?
- Is there a better way this should fit alongside ROS 2, Nav2, Open-RMF, building systems, or attestation systems?
I’m not looking for validation that the idea is good. If something is redundant, badly placed, overcomplicated, or just wrong, that’s the feedback I’d rather hear.
Repo:
https://github.com/placeauth/spatial-policy-protocol
Whitepaper:
https://github.com/placeauth/spatial-policy-protocol/blob/main/docs/whitepaper.md
Technical review notes:
https://github.com/placeauth/spatial-policy-protocol/blob/main/docs/technical-review.md