RBQ SDK — ROS2 Overview

The RBQ ROS2 SDK (rbq_sdk/ros2/) provides a ROS 2 Humble interface to the RBQ robot, including robot state publishers, sensor data streams, vision topics, and command subscribers.

What the ROS2 SDK provides

• Robot Control — Gait switching, posture commands, velocity control, auto-docking.
• Sensor Feedback — IMU, joint states, leg joint status, foot contact, and battery state.
• Vision Streaming — Front, rear, and body camera topics (RGB, IR, Depth, camera_info).
• RViz2 Visualization — URDF robot model with custom RViz panel for live commands.

System requirements

Component	Requirement
OS	Ubuntu 22.04
ROS 2	Humble
RMW	rmw_cyclonedds_cpp
Python	3.8 / 3.9 / 3.10

Quick install

# Install ROS Humble (first time) — https://docs.ros.org/en/humble/Installation/Ubuntu-Install-Debs.html
sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y ros-humble-desktop \
    python3-colcon-common-extensions python3-rosdep \
    ros-humble-rmw-cyclonedds-cpp ros-humble-cyclonedds
sudo rosdep init && rosdep update
source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash

# Build the SDK workspace
cd rbq_sdk/ros2
rosdep install --from-paths src -y --ignore-src
colcon build --symlink-install
source install/setup.bash

No driver node

There is no separate driver node to run. The robot's onboard core software (Network / DdsBridge) speaks ROS 2-compatible DDS directly, so ros2 topic, rviz2, and rqt interoperate with the robot without launching any bridge process. (The legacy rbq_driver node and start_ros_driver.bash are removed — the script is now a deprecated no-op.)

Run (simulation)

Launch the MuJoCo simulator (which runs the same DDS bridge as the robot), then source the workspace in another terminal to see the topics:

bash scripts/sim.bash

# in another terminal
source rbq_sdk/ros2/install/setup.bash
export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_cyclonedds_cpp
ros2 topic list

Run (real robot)

Once the robot is powered on and on the same network, source the workspace and use ROS 2 tools directly — there is no driver to launch:

source rbq_sdk/ros2/install/setup.bash
export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_cyclonedds_cpp
ros2 topic list

Run the examples

The rbq_examples package ships three runnable nodes:

source rbq_sdk/ros2/install/setup.bash
ros2 run rbq_examples rbq_high_level   # high-level velocity / posture commands
ros2 run rbq_examples rbq_target_go    # relative go-to-target navigation
ros2 run rbq_examples depth_to_pcl     # depth image → PointCloud2

Walkthroughs: High-Level Control · Target-Go · Depth → PointCloud.

rbq_status_example is compiled but not installed, so ros2 run cannot find it — read it from rbq_sdk/ros2/src/rbq_examples/src/ as a reference.

RViz2 Visualization

Visualize robot state, URDF model, and sensor data in real time — and send commands — via the RViz2 GUI panel.

bash scripts/start_rviz.bash