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Set Up the ROS 2 Bridge

Goal: Integrate a ROS 2 robot with Rover Nexus by running the external bridge that translates ROS 2 (DDS) to and from the local Zenoh Cap'n Proto topics the agent uses.

Before you begin

  • The agent is installed via its bootstrap command (which also enrolls the robot).
  • A working ROS 2 robot publishing its motion/status topics over DDS.
  • A ROS 2 workspace to clone the Rover Nexus ROS 2 bridge repository into. (Supported ROS 2 distributions are coming soon.)

Why a bridge is needed

The agent does not speak ROS 2 / DDS directly. It only consumes local Zenoh topics carrying Cap'n Proto messages. The bridge is a separate process that sits between your ROS 2 graph and the agent:

ROS 2 nodes <--(DDS)--> bridge <--(local Zenoh, Cap'n Proto)--> rover-agent --> cloud

The bridge subscribes to your ROS 2 telemetry topics and republishes them as Cap'n Proto on the local Zenoh topics the agent ingests. It also relays commands the agent emits back into ROS 2.

Steps

The bridge's mapping config format and launch command are coming soon — contact [email protected] for current details. The overall flow is:

  1. Clone the Rover Nexus ROS 2 bridge repository into your ROS 2 workspace and build it with your usual ROS 2 build tool (for example, colcon build).

  2. Configure the topic mapping so the bridge knows which ROS 2 topics carry motion and status telemetry, and how they map to the Cap'n Proto messages the agent expects.

  3. Point the bridge at the same local Zenoh session/network the agent uses.

  4. Start the bridge (for example as a systemd service or a ROS 2 launch).

  5. Verify telemetry flows end to end: the agent logs show incoming messages and the robot's live data appears in the web app. See Verify Agent Connectivity.

Notes

  • The agent's ingest path is the same whether or not the robot is ROS 2 based; the bridge simply produces the local Zenoh Cap'n Proto messages on the ROS 2 robot's behalf.
  • Commands from the cloud (for example mode, go-to, velocity, stop) are emitted by the agent onto local Zenoh; the bridge relays them into ROS 2.

Next steps