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Bridge communication between ROS 1 and ROS 2

This package provides a network bridge which enables the exchange of messages between ROS 1 and ROS 2.

The bridge is currently implemented in C++ as at the time the Python API for ROS 2 had not been developed. Because of this its support is limited to only the message/service types available at compile time of the bridge. The bridge provided with the prebuilt ROS 2 binaries includes support for common ROS interfaces (messages/services), such as the interface packages listed in the ros2/common_interfaces repository and tf2_msgs. See the documentation for more details on how ROS 1 and ROS 2 interfaces are associated with each other. If you would like to use a bridge with other interfaces (including your own custom types), you will have to build the bridge from source (instructions below), after building and sourcing your custom types in separate ROS 1 and ROS 2 workspaces. See the documentation for an example setup.

For efficiency reasons, topics will only be bridged when matching publisher-subscriber pairs are active for a topic on either side of the bridge. As a result using ros2 topic echo <topic-name> doesn't work but fails with an error message Could not determine the type for the passed topic if no other subscribers are present since the dynamic bridge hasn't bridged the topic yet. As a workaround the topic type can be specified explicitly ros2 topic echo <topic-name> <topic-type> which triggers the bridging of the topic since the echo command represents the necessary subscriber. On the ROS 1 side rostopic echo doesn't have an option to specify the topic type explicitly. Therefore it can't be used with the dynamic bridge if no other subscribers are present. As an alternative you can use the --bridge-all-2to1-topics option to bridge all ROS 2 topics to ROS 1 so that tools such as rostopic echo, rostopic list and rqt will see the topics even if there are no matching ROS 1 subscribers. Run ros2 run ros1_bridge dynamic_bridge -- --help for more options.

Prerequisites

In order to run the bridge you need to either:

  • get prebuilt binaries or
  • build the bridge as well as the other ROS 2 packages from source.

After that you can run both examples described below.

For all examples you need to source the environment of the install space where the bridge was built or unpacked to. Additionally you will need to either source the ROS 1 environment or at least set the ROS_MASTER_URI and run a roscore.

The following ROS 1 packages are required to build and use the bridge:

  • catkin
  • roscpp
  • roslaunch (for roscore executable)
  • rosmsg
  • std_msgs
  • as well as the Python package rospkg

To run the following examples you will also need these ROS 1 packages:

  • rosbash (for rosrun executable)
  • roscpp_tutorials
  • rospy_tutorials
  • rostopic
  • rqt_image_view

Prerequisites for the examples in this file

In order to make the examples below portable between versions of ROS, we define two environment variables, ROS1_INSTALL_PATH and ROS2_INSTALL_PATH. These are defined as the paths to the installation location of their respective ROS versions.

If you installed Noetic in the default location, then the definition of ROS1_INSTALL_PATH will be /opt/ros/noetic.

Building the bridge as described below requires you to build all of ROS 2. We assume that you have downloaded it to ~/ros2_rolling, and that is where you plan on building it. In this case, ROS2_INSTALL_PATH will be defined as ~/ros2_rolling/install.

If you've chosen to install either or both versions of ROS somewhere else, you will need adjust the definitions below to match your installation paths.

Because these definitions are used continuously throughout this page, it is useful to add the following lines to your shell startup file (~/.bashrc if you are using bash, ~/.zshrc if you are using zsh). Modify these definitions as appropriate for the versions of ROS that you're using, and for the shell that you're using.

export ROS1_INSTALL_PATH=/opt/ros/noetic
export ROS2_INSTALL_PATH=~/ros2_rolling/install

Note that no trailing '/' character is used in either definition. If you have problems involving paths, please verify that you have the correct path to the installation location, and that you do not have a trailing '/' in either definition.

Building the bridge from source

Before continuing you should have the prerequisites for building ROS 2 from source installed following these instructions.

In the past, building this package required patches to ROS 1, but in the latest releases that is no longer the case. If you run into trouble first make sure you have at least version 1.11.16 of ros_comm and rosbag.

The bridge uses pkg-config to find ROS 1 packages. ROS 2 packages are found through CMake using find_package(). Therefore the CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH must not contain paths from ROS 1 which would overlay ROS 2 packages.

Here are the steps for Linux and OSX.

You should first build everything but the ROS 1 bridge with normal colcon arguments. We don't recommend having your ROS 1 environment sourced during this step as it can add other libraries to the path.

colcon build --symlink-install --packages-skip ros1_bridge

Next you need to source the ROS 1 environment. If you set the ROS1_INSTALL_PATH environment variable as described above, then the following will source the correct setup.bash file.

source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash

The bridge will be built with support for any message/service packages that are on your path and have an associated mapping between ROS 1 and ROS 2. Therefore you must add any ROS 1 or ROS 2 workspaces that have message/service packages that you want to be bridged to your path before building the bridge. This can be done by adding explicit dependencies on the message/service packages to the package.xml of the bridge, so that colcon will add them to the path before it builds the bridge. Alternatively you can do it manually by sourcing the relevant workspaces yourself, e.g.:

# You have already sourced your ROS installation.
# Source your ROS 2 installation:
source ${ROS2_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# And if you have a ROS 1 overlay workspace, something like:
# . <install-space-to-ros1-overlay-ws>/setup.bash
# And if you have a ROS 2 overlay workspace, something like:
# . <install-space-to-ros2-overlay-ws>/local_setup.bash

Then build just the ROS 1 bridge:

colcon build --symlink-install --packages-select ros1_bridge --cmake-force-configure

Note: If you are building on a memory constrained system you might want to limit the number of parallel jobs by setting e.g. the environment variable MAKEFLAGS=-j1.

Example 1: run the bridge and the example talker and listener

The talker and listener can be either a ROS 1 or a ROS 2 node. The bridge will pass the message along transparently.

Note: When you are running these demos make sure to only source the indicated workspaces. You will get errors from most tools if they have both workspaces in their environment.

Example 1a: ROS 1 talker and ROS 2 listener

First we start a ROS 1 roscore:

# Shell A (ROS 1 only):
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
roscore

Then we start the dynamic bridge which will watch the available ROS 1 and ROS 2 topics. Once a matching topic has been detected it starts to bridge the messages on this topic.

# Shell B (ROS 1 + ROS 2):
# Source ROS 1 first:
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
# Source ROS 2 next:
source ${ROS2_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# For example:
# . /opt/ros/dashing/setup.bash
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://localhost:11311
ros2 run ros1_bridge dynamic_bridge

The program will start outputting the currently available topics in ROS 1 and ROS 2 in a regular interval.

Now we start the ROS 1 talker.

# Shell C:
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
rosrun rospy_tutorials talker

The ROS 1 node will start printing the published messages to the console.

Now we start the ROS 2 listener from the demo_nodes_cpp ROS 2 package.

# Shell D:
source ${ROS2_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp listener

The ROS 2 node will start printing the received messages to the console.

When looking at the output in shell B there will be a line stating that the bridge for this topic has been created:

created 1to2 bridge for topic '/chatter' with ROS 1 type 'std_msgs/String' and ROS 2 type 'std_msgs/String'

At the end stop all programs with Ctrl-C. Once you stop either the talker or the listener in shell B a line will be stating that the bridge has been torn down:

removed 1to2 bridge for topic '/chatter'

The screenshot shows all the shell windows and their expected content:

ROS 1 talker and ROS 2 listener

Example 1b: ROS 2 talker and ROS 1 listener

The steps are very similar to the previous example and therefore only the commands are described.

# Shell A:
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
roscore
# Shell B:
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
source ${ROS2_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://localhost:11311
ros2 run ros1_bridge dynamic_bridge

Now we start the ROS 2 talker from the demo_nodes_py ROS 2 package.

# Shell C:
source ${ROS2_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
ros2 run demo_nodes_py talker

Now we start the ROS 1 listener.

# Shell D:
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
rosrun roscpp_tutorials listener

Example 2: run the bridge and exchange images

The second example will demonstrate the bridge passing along bigger and more complicated messages. A ROS 2 node is publishing images retrieved from a camera and on the ROS 1 side we use rqt_image_view to render the images in a GUI. And a ROS 1 publisher can send a message to toggle an option in the ROS 2 node.

First we start a ROS 1 roscore and the bridge:

# Shell A:
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
roscore
# Shell B:
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
source ${ROS2_INSTALL_PATH}/install/setup.bash
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://localhost:11311
ros2 run ros1_bridge dynamic_bridge

Now we start the ROS 1 GUI:

# Shell C:
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
rqt_image_view /image

Now we start the ROS 2 image publisher from the image_tools ROS 2 package:

# Shell D:
source ${ROS2_INSTALL_PATH}/install/setup.bash
ros2 run image_tools cam2image

You should see the current images in rqt_image_view which are coming from the ROS 2 node cam2image and are being passed along by the bridge.

To exercise the bridge in the opposite direction at the same time you can publish a message to the ROS 2 node from ROS 1. By publishing either true or false to the flip_image topic, the camera node will conditionally flip the image before sending it. You can either use the Message Publisher plugin in rqt to publish a std_msgs/Bool message on the topic flip_image, or run one of the two following rostopic commands:

# Shell E:
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
rostopic pub -r 1 /flip_image std_msgs/Bool "{data: true}"
rostopic pub -r 1 /flip_image std_msgs/Bool "{data: false}"

The screenshot shows all the shell windows and their expected content (it was taken when Indigo was supported - you should use Melodic):

ROS 2 camera and ROS 1 rqt

Example 3: run the bridge for AddTwoInts service

In this example we will bridge a service TwoInts from ros/roscpp_tutorials and AddTwoInts from ros2/roscpp_examples.

While building, ros1_bridge looks for all installed ROS and ROS2 services. Found services are matched by comparing package name, service name and fields in a request and a response. If all names are the same in ROS and ROS2 service, the bridge will be created. It is also possible to pair services manually by creating a yaml file that will include names of corresponding services. You can find more information here.

So to make this example work, please make sure that the roscpp_tutorials package is installed on your system and the environment is set up correctly while you build ros1_bridge.

Launch ROS master

# Shell A:
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
roscore -p 11311

Launch dynamic_bridge:

# Shell B:
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
source ${ROS2_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://localhost:11311
ros2 run ros1_bridge dynamic_bridge

Launch TwoInts server:

# Shell C:
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://localhost:11311
rosrun roscpp_tutorials add_two_ints_server

Launch AddTwoInts client:

# Shell D:
source ${ROS2_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp add_two_ints_client

Example 4: bridge only selected topics and services

This example expands on example 3 by selecting a subset of topics and services to be bridged. This is handy when, for example, you have a system that runs most of it's stuff in either ROS 1 or ROS 2 but needs a few nodes from the 'opposite' version of ROS. Where the dynamic_bridge bridges all topics and service, the parameter_bridge uses the ROS 1 parameter server to choose which topics and services are bridged. Note: The service bridge is monodirectional. You must use either services_2_to_1 and/or services_1_to_2 to bridge ROS 2 -> ROS 1 or ROS 1 -> ROS 2 services accordingly. For example, to bridge only the /chatter topic bidirectionally, and the /add_two_ints service from ROS 2 to ROS 1 only, create this configuration file, bridge.yaml:

topics:
  -
    topic: /chatter  # Topic name on both ROS 1 and ROS 2
    type: std_msgs/msg/String  # Type of topic to bridge
    queue_size: 1  # Queue size
services_2_to_1:
  -
    service: /add_two_ints  # ROS 1 service name
    type: roscpp_tutorials/TwoInts  # The ROS 1 service type name

Start a ROS 1 roscore:

# Shell A (ROS 1 only):
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
roscore

Then load the bridge.yaml config file and start the talker to publish on the /chatter topic:

Shell B: (ROS 1 only):
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
rosparam load bridge.yaml

rosrun rospy_tutorials talker
Shell C: (ROS 1 only):
source ${ROS1_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
# Or, on OSX, something like:
# . ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash

rosrun roscpp_tutorials add_two_ints_server

Then, in a few ROS 2 terminals:

# Shell D:
source ${ROS2_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
ros2 run ros1_bridge parameter_bridge

If all is well, the logging shows it is creating bridges for the topic and service and you should be able to call the service and listen to the ROS 1 talker from ROS 2:

# Shell E:
source ${ROS2_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp listener

This should start printing text like I heard: [hello world ...] with a timestamp.

# Shell F:
source ${ROS2_INSTALL_PATH}/setup.bash
ros2 service call /add_two_ints example_interfaces/srv/AddTwoInts "{a: 1, b: 2}"

If all is well, the output should contain example_interfaces.srv.AddTwoInts_Response(sum=3)

Parametrizing Quality of Service

An advantage of ROS 2 over ROS 1 is the possibility to define different Quality of Service settings per topic. The parameter bridge optionally allows for this as well. For some topics, like /tf_static this is actually required, as this is a latching topic in ROS 1. In ROS 2 with the parameter_bridge, this requires that topic to be configured as such:

topics:
  -
    topic: /tf_static
    type: tf2_msgs/msg/TFMessage
    queue_size: 1
    qos:
      history: keep_all
      durability: transient_local

All other QoS options (as documented here in https://docs.ros.org/en/foxy/Concepts/About-Quality-of-Service-Settings.html) are available:

topics:
  -
    topic: /some_ros1_topic
    type: std_msgs/msg/String
    queue_size: 1
    qos:
      history: keep_last  # OR keep_all, then you can omit `depth` parameter below
      depth: 10  # Only required when history == keep_last
      reliability: reliable  # OR best_effort
      durability: transient_local  # OR volatile
      deadline:
          secs: 10
          nsecs: 2345
      lifespan:
          secs: 20
          nsecs: 3456
      liveliness: liveliness_system_default  # Values from https://design.ros2.org/articles/qos_deadline_liveliness_lifespan.html, eg. LIVELINESS_AUTOMATIC
      liveliness_lease_duration:
          secs: 40
          nsecs: 5678

Note that the qos section can be omitted entirely and options not set are left default.

Action bridge

This bridge extends the ros1_bridge to support actions. The bridge works in both directions, meaning an action goal can be sent from ROS 1 client to ROS 2 server, or from ROS 2 client to ROS 1 server.

The arguments for the action_bridge node are:
direction: from client (ros1 or ros2) e.g.:

  • ROS1 client to ROS2 server --> direction = ros1
  • ROS2 client to ROS1 server --> direction = ros2

package: package of the ROS1 server node
type: action interface type of ROS1
name: action name

For sending goals from a ROS 2 action client to a ROS 1 action server

# Terminal 1 -- action bridge
# Make sure roscore is already running
source <ros1_bridge-install-dir>/setup.bash
ros2 run ros1_bridge action_bridge ros1 actionlib_tutorials Fibonacci fibonacci

# Terminal 2 -- ROS 1 action server
source <ros1-install-dir>/setup.bash
rosrun actionlib_tutorials fibonacci_server

# Terminal 3 -- ROS 2 action client
source <ros2-install-dir>/setup.bash
ros2 run action_tutorials_cpp fibonacci_action_client 20

For sending goals from a ROS 1 action client to a ROS 2 action server

# Terminal 1 -- action bridge
# Make sure roscore is already running
source <ros1_bridge-install-dir>/setup.bash
ros2 run ros1_bridge action_bridge ros2 action_tutorials_interfaces action/Fibonacci fibonacci

# Terminal 2 -- ROS 2 action server
source <ros2-install-dir>/setup.bash
ros2 run action_tutorials_cpp fibonacci_action_server

# Terminal 3 -- ROS 1 action client
source <ros1-install-dir>/setup.bash
rosrun actionlib_tutorials fibonacci_client 20

dynamic_bridge has been extended to handle actions as well.