Ouster ROS 2 driver¶

This page is a practical quick start for the official Ouster ROS 2 driver from ouster-lidar/ouster-ros. It focuses on the workflow we use most often: prepare a ROS 2 workspace, build the driver, and launch a live sensor.

For hardware background and model comparison, see the general Ouster overview in ouster.md.

What the driver does¶

The ROS 2 driver connects to an Ouster sensor, configures it, and publishes the live data as ROS topics. The main outputs are:

/ouster/imu
/ouster/points
/ouster/points2 when the sensor is configured for dual return

Before you start¶

The official ROS 2 branch targets Rolling, Humble, Iron, Jazzy, and Kilted. In practice, you should already have a working ROS 2 installation and a sourced workspace environment.

Install the common dependencies first:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y \
    build-essential \
    cmake \
    libeigen3-dev \
    libjsoncpp-dev \
    libspdlog-dev \
    libcurl4-openssl-dev \
    python3-colcon-common-extensions \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-pcl-ros \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-tf2-eigen \
    ros-$ROS_DISTRO-rviz2

If you plan to use PCAP replay later, also install libpcap-dev.

Clone and build¶

Create a ROS 2 workspace and clone the ROS 2 branch of the driver into src:

mkdir -p ~/ros2_ws/src
cd ~/ros2_ws/src
git clone -b ros2 --recurse-submodules https://github.com/ouster-lidar/ouster-ros.git

Source your ROS 2 environment and build the workspace with colcon:

source /opt/ros/$ROS_DISTRO/setup.bash
cd ~/ros2_ws
colcon build --symlink-install --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

We currently use the lexus_bringup repository.

To launch all sensors and generate a merged point cloud, run:

ros2 launch lexus_bringup lidar_os_merged.launch.py

The sensor configuration files are located in lexus_bringup/config/lidar.

The Ouster sensor IP addresses are:

Ouster Center: 192.168.10.20
Ouster Left: 192.168.10.23
Ouster Right: 192.168.10.21