[Twisted-Python] Is Twisted adequate for usage in reactive robots?

[Willi Richert]

Hi Twisted developers,

for our soccer robot we are evaluating moving away from Java for the high 
level behavior code in parts to Python. At the moment we have a bunch of Java 
threads that listen at the various comm. channels for incoming and outgoing 
messages and pass them to the main Java processing thread.

We plan to reimplement all the basic behavior stuff (move to, avoid, ...) that 
returns abstract movement commands in Python. For that the Python process has 
to communicate with a bunch of processes (particle filter, etc.) using our 
own robotics optimized message format (the same format is used to communicate 
using TCP/IP, CAN, serial). After I've read a bunch of success stories I 
thought that maybe Twisted could be used to abstract all the gory low-level 
network details. Would that be advisable for a highly reactive robot? The 
main loop of the Python process would have to run at 50Hz. Longer taking 
calculation process are processed in a separate thread. Is there any 
comparison regarding asynchronous and thread execution/latency/... speeds?

Regards,
wr