realsenseai/realsense-ros

ROS Wrapper for RealSense™ Cameras

What it solves

This project provides a ROS (Robot Operating System) wrapper for Intel RealSense™ cameras, allowing developers to easily integrate these depth and color sensors into ROS-based robotic applications. It bridges the gap between the RealSense SDK 2.0 (librealsense2) and the ROS ecosystem, enabling the streaming of camera data as ROS topics.

How it works

The wrapper acts as a node that interfaces with the RealSense SDK. It captures data from the camera sensors and publishes it as standard ROS topics (e.g., image raw, camera info, and metadata). It supports both ROS1 (legacy) and ROS2, with a strong focus on the latest ROS2 distributions. The project also offers a USE_LIFECYCLE_NODE option for advanced node management and explicit state transitions (e.g., configuring, activating, deactivating).

Who it’s for

Robotics developers and researchers who use RealSense cameras and want to integrate them into a ROS-based software stack for tasks like SLAM, obstacle avoidance, or 3D perception.

Highlights

  • Multi-Distro Support: Compatible with a wide range of ROS2 distributions including Humble, Iron, Jazzy, and Kilted.
  • Runtime Configuration: Allows enabling/disabling sensors and filters (like temporal and spatial filters) while the node is running.
  • Flexible Namespacing: Supports custom camera names and namespaces to manage multiple cameras across multiple robots.
  • Lifecycle Management: Optional support for ROS2 Lifecycle Nodes for better control over node states.
  • Cross-Platform: Provides installation paths for both Ubuntu and Windows.

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