mola_bridge_ros2

RawDataSource acting as a bidirectional bridge between ROS2 and MOLA modules.

Can be used to:

• ROS2->MOLA: Interface a real sensor using a ROS driver node and run SLAM with it. See mola_lidar_odometry demos.
• MOLA->ROS2: Expose a dataset as ROS2 topics, from any of the datasets supported by MOLA. Example: kitti
• ROS2<->MOLA: Run SLAM on a live sensor stream, then send back the reconstructed map and trajectory to ROS for further processing or visualization in RViz. See mola_lidar_odometry demos.

If you want to run SLAM on a rosbag, the module mola_input_rosbag2 provides a more convenient interface, e.g. allows fast-forwarding or skipping parts of a bag.

Building this module requires ROS 2 to be installed, and its setup.bash activation script being sourced before invoking CMake to configure and build MOLA.

See package docs for instructions and options to install ROS prerequisites.

Provided MOLA modules:

• BridgeROS2, type RawDataSourceBase.

Build and install

Refer to the root MOLA repository.

Docs and examples

See this package page in the documentation.

License

This package is released under the BSD 3-clause license.

Changelog for package mola_bridge_ros2

2.7.0 (2026-04-22)

• Merge pull request #131 from MOLAorg/feat/actions-custom-runner CI actions: build for arm64 too
• Merge branch 'Zeal-Robotics-fix/bridge-ros2-skip-empty-tf-on-rep105-failure' into develop
• Fix formatting and clarify function arguments
• fix(bridge_ros2): skip TF publish when REP-105 odom lookup fails In [publishLocalizationTf]{.title-ref}, when [publish_localization_following_rep105]{.title-ref} is enabled, the bridge needs to look up [odom_frame -> base_link_frame]{.title-ref} to compose [map -> odom]{.title-ref}. If that lookup fails (e.g. wheel odometry hasn't started publishing yet during system startup), the previous code logged the error but still fell through to [tf_bc_->sendTransform(tf)]{.title-ref} with a default-constructed [TransformStamped]{.title-ref} (empty [frame_id]{.title-ref} and [child_frame_id]{.title-ref}). This poisoned every subscriber's tf2 buffer at the localization rate, producing a continuous stream of [TF_NO_FRAME_ID]{.title-ref}, [TF_NO_CHILD_FRAME_ID]{.title-ref}, and [TF_SELF_TRANSFORM]{.title-ref} errors across every node in the system until the odom TF became available. Fix: return early on lookup failure so no broadcast happens. While here, restructure the function with an early-return guard for [publish_tf_from_slam]{.title-ref} to flatten the nesting, and include the actual frame names in the error message. Behavior unchanged in the success path.
• Merge pull request #129 from MOLAorg/feat/ros2-diagnostics Feature: ROS2 diagnostics
• feat(bridge_ros2): publish REP-107 /diagnostics DiagnosticArray Collect structured diagnostics from modules implementing the new mola::DiagnosticsProvider interface and publish them on the standard ROS 2 /diagnostics topic alongside the existing ad-hoc mola_diagnostics/ topics. Adds the diagnostic_msgs dependency. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <<noreply@anthropic.com>>
• Merge pull request #122 from MOLAorg/feat/ros2-bridge-multiple-odometries Add param 'odometry_as_robot_pose_observation' to switch OdometryMsg …
• Skip entries with empty topic name
• Add param 'odometry_as_robot_pose_observation' to switch OdometryMsg mapping to MRPT types
• Merge pull request #121 from MOLAorg/fix/clean-up-old-mrpt-version-checks Clean up: remove old mrpt version fallback code sections
• Contributors: Jose Luis Blanco-Claraco, Robin Van Cauwenbergh

2.6.1 (2026-04-02)

2.6.0 (2026-03-12)

• Remove now obsolete version check macro
• Merge pull request #108 from MOLAorg/feat/use-gps-msgs Support gps_msgs data types too for ROS2
• Support gps_msgs as alternative to NavSatFix
• Merge pull request #107 from MOLAorg/fix/viz-decay-clouds Fix/viz-decay-clouds
• Update coyright notes
• Contributors: Jose Luis Blanco-Claraco

2.5.0 (2026-02-14)

• Merge pull request #105 from MOLAorg/feat/refactor-ros2-bridges Refactor to use external rosbag2 conversion in mrpt_ros_bridge
• Use refactored ros2mrpt bridge in live node too
• Fix: potential access to the ROS2 node before it's ready
• Merge pull request #101 from MOLAorg/fix/mola-bridge-no-pub-queue Fix: mola bridge no pub queue
• BridgeRos2: publish localization updates immediately, do not buffer them
• Add debug traces
• Merge pull request #99 from MOLAorg/feat/ros2-bridge-pub-geographic ROS2 bridge: publish geographic poses too
• ros2 bridge: use geographic_msgs, store the last georeference info internally, and publish georef poses merge of these commits:
  • Enable many more clang-tidy checks
  • lint clean
  • implement publishing georeferenced poses
  • mola-viz: fix potential crash on edge case with all points having NaN value
  • FIX: potential crash if no MapServer is present and map services are called
• fix clang-format
• FIX: potential deadlock in BridgeROS2 dtor due to early errors before ros2 is initialized
• Contributors: Jose Luis Blanco-Claraco

2.4.0 (2025-12-28)

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