Installing and Using ros1_bridge

The ros1_bridge package allows ROS1 and ROS2 nodes to communicate with each other over the same network. This is useful when some packages are only available in ROS1 (Noetic) and need to interface with ROS2 (Humble) nodes.

• Repository: ros2/ros1_bridge

• Official Setup Guide: ros1_bridge README

Note

The ros1_bridge must be built from source — it cannot be installed via apt as it requires both ROS1 and ROS2 to be present on the same machine at build time.

Building ROS2 and ROS1 packages workflow:

ros_ws
|_ src
   |_ ROS1
   |_ ROS2

The workspace is split into two subdirectories so that ROS1 and ROS2 packages can be built independently without interfering with each other. The build steps must be run in the correct order — ROS2 first, then ROS1 — and each must be sourced before building.

1. Source Humble

source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash

2. Build only the ROS2 packages:

colcon build --symlink-install --packages-ignore-regex src/ROS1

3. Source Noetic:

source ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash

4. Build only the ROS1 packages:

colcon build --symlink-install --packages-ignore-regex src/ROS2

5. Source both workspaces in two separate terminals, then launch the bridge in a third:

# Terminal 1 — source ROS1 and run a ROS1 node
source ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
source ~/ros_ws/install/setup.bash

# Terminal 2 — source ROS2 and run a ROS2 node
source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash
source ~/ros_ws/install/setup.bash

# Terminal 3 — launch the bridge
source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash
source ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash
source ~/ros_ws/install/setup.bash
ros2 run ros1_bridge dynamic_bridge

Note

The dynamic_bridge automatically creates bridges for any topics that have matching publishers and subscribers on both sides. If you only need to bridge specific topics, use parameter_bridge instead for better performance.