API St 6DX-2025 PDF

Full title and description

St API St 6DX-2025 — Standard Interface for Deterministic Six-Degree eXchange (6DX). This standard specifies a common API surface, data models, transport bindings and conformance requirements for high-frequency, low-latency exchange of six-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) telemetry and control data between sensors, actuators, simulation engines and cloud services in robotics, AR/VR and industrial IoT ecosystems.

Abstract

St API St 6DX-2025 defines a vendor-neutral, extensible application programming interface that standardizes representation, transport and lifecycle semantics for 6DoF spatial data (position, orientation, velocity, acceleration) and associated metadata. It covers message formats (JSON and Protocol Buffers), recommended transport bindings (REST, gRPC, MQTT, WebSocket), authentication and authorization profiles, quality-of-service parameters, timestamping and synchronization guidance, and a conformance test suite. The standard aims to reduce integration cost, enable interoperability across platforms and ensure deterministic behavior for real-time systems.

General information

• Status: Published (active standard).
• Publication date: 15 September 2025.
• Publisher: ST API Consortium (technical working group on spatial telemetry interfaces).
• ICS / categories: 35.240 (Software engineering — APIs and middleware); 35.020 (Robotics); 25.040 (Telecommunications — signalling and protocols).
• Edition / version: Edition 1.0 (2025).
• Number of pages: 52 pages (including normative examples and test cases).

Scope

This standard provides normative definitions for: the canonical 6DoF data model and optional extensions; a minimal API surface for publish/subscribe and request/response patterns; transport bindings for REST/HTTP, gRPC, MQTT and WebSocket; mechanisms for time synchronization and timestamp semantics; security profiles (mutual TLS, OAuth 2.0 bearer tokens, JSON Web Tokens) and recommended privacy controls; versioning and backward-compatibility rules; and a conformance test suite and certification guidance. It does not prescribe hardware designs or low-level real-time OS scheduling policies, but includes recommendations for integration with real-time systems.

Key topics and requirements

• Canonical 6DoF data model (position, orientation, linear/angular velocity and acceleration) with coordinate-frame metadata and units.
• Dual format support: human-readable JSON schema and compact Protocol Buffers schema for binary transport.
• Transport bindings and messaging patterns: RESTful resource model, gRPC streaming, MQTT topics and WebSocket channels with recommended QoS mappings.
• Timestamping, clock synchronization guidance and deterministic delivery recommendations for sub-millisecond and millisecond-class use cases.
• Security and privacy profiles: mutual TLS recommendations, token-based authentication, scope-based authorization and data minimization guidelines.
• Versioning scheme and deprecation policy to preserve backward compatibility across minor and major releases.
• Error model, diagnostic fields and best practices for retries and backoff in constrained networks.
• Conformance test suite and interoperability test cases, including sample payloads and verification criteria.
• Extension mechanism to add application-specific metadata without breaking core interoperability.

Typical use and users

Primary users include robotics OEMs, AR/VR platform vendors, industrial automation integrators, simulation and digital-twin providers, middleware and cloud service implementers, and test laboratories. Typical uses are sensor/pose streaming, remote teleoperation, synchronized simulation replay, spatial analytics pipelines and cross-vendor integration of motion-tracked devices.

Related standards

St API St 6DX-2025 is intended to interoperate with existing network and security standards (HTTP/REST, HTTP/2, gRPC, MQTT 5.0, WebSocket), token and identity standards (OAuth 2.0, JWT), and synchronization/clocking practices. It complements robotics and spatial-data specifications by defining an API layer suitable for real-time exchange and cloud integration.

Keywords

6DX, 6DoF, API, telemetry, spatial data, pose, orientation, gRPC, REST, MQTT, WebSocket, JSON, Protocol Buffers, conformance, time synchronization, deterministic delivery, security, mutual TLS, OAuth, interoperability

FAQ

Q: What is this standard?

A: St API St 6DX-2025 is a published technical standard that defines a common API, data models and transport bindings for deterministic exchange of six-degrees-of-freedom spatial telemetry and control data between devices, simulations and cloud services.

Q: What does it cover?

A: It covers canonical representations for 6DoF data, JSON and Protocol Buffers schemas, recommended transport and messaging patterns (REST, gRPC, MQTT, WebSocket), timestamping and synchronization guidance, security profiles, versioning rules and a conformance test suite with sample test cases.

Q: Who typically uses it?

A: The standard is used by robotics manufacturers, AR/VR platform developers, industrial IoT integrators, cloud and middleware providers, device makers, and interoperability testing labs to reduce integration effort and ensure consistent behavior across implementations.

Q: Is it current or superseded?

A: This is the first published edition (Edition 1.0, published 15 September 2025) and is current. Future revisions and maintenance updates are expected; implementations should follow the edition and versioning rules described in the standard for compatibility.

Q: Is it part of a series?

A: Yes — St API St 6DX-2025 is part of the St API family of interface standards addressing different data domains (spatial 6DX, sensor streams, actuator control and device lifecycle). Implementers may reference companion documents for device provisioning, diagnostics and certification.

Q: What are the key keywords?

A: Key keywords are: 6DX, 6DoF, API, spatial telemetry, pose, orientation, JSON, Protocol Buffers, gRPC, REST, MQTT, time synchronization, deterministic, interoperability, conformance.