What alternatives there are that exist and can replace ROS? I imagine that not all companies are using ROS, however, I'm not in that field exactly so I don't know. I always thought that the quality of that code is mediocre at best.
Most companies in production are inventing their own purpose-built systems and not open-sourcing them. High speed control loops usually use some form of real-time OS, AI-forward robots are starting to use fused CUDA kernels.