off_highway_radar

The off_highway_radar package provides a receiver node to receive and decode CAN frames of the Bosch Radar Off-Highway into ROS messages - it implements an off_highway_can::Receiver. Furthermore, the package provides a sender node to encode and send needed radar input data as CAN frames - an implementation of an off_highway_can::Sender.

Further information on the Bosch Radar Off-Highway, it’s inputs, outputs and how they can be interpreted can be found in the corresponding datasheet or the Technical Customer Documentation (TCD) of the sensor system.

Supported devices

Contact: off-highway.beg@bosch.com

Nodes

Receiver

The radar receiver decodes CAN frames into an object list, manages the current list and publishes it cyclically.

All received messages are checked for their cyclic redundancy check (CRC), rolling message counter and age (message not older than parameter allowed_age). If any of these checks do not succeed the received message is not further processed and skipped.

The relevant radar CAN frame IDs to process are specified by the object_base_id and info_id parameters. They should correspond to the first object frame ID and the info frame ID of the radar CAN node and need to be adapted for the specific bus setup. If multiple radar sensors need to be decoded on the same bus just launch multiple receiver nodes with individual *_id parameters.

The object list is published as a list of radar objects or as a point cloud and contains up to 40 objects (sensor limit). Only valid objects in the list are published (valid flag set).

The radar zone data is not processed in this version.

If the receiver node does not receive anything within a configured period (parameter timeout), it will publish a diagnostic error on /diagnostics. Also, the sensor information CAN frame gets published and is checked for the diagnostic status of the radar. On error, the node will publish a diagnostic error on /diagnostics.

Subscribed Topics

• from_can_bus (can_msgs/Frame)
  • Radar CAN frames to decode

Published Topics

• objects (off_highway_radar_msgs/Objects)
  • Update Rate: configurable with publish_frequency
  • Contains current object list of radar as custom message containing the same information as each object’s CAN frame. Mapping to the respective CAN frame is done via the id field.
• objects_pcl (sensor_msgs/PointCloud2)
  • Update Rate: configurable with publish_frequency
  • Contains current object list of radar as point cloud.
• info (off_highway_radar_msgs/Information)
  • Update Rate: On each sensor information CAN frame
  • Contains current sensor information message containing the same information as the respective CAN frame.
• /diagnostics (diagnostic_msgs/DiagnosticArray)
  • Update Rate: On each sensor information CAN frame or if receiver timed out periodically with timeout period
  • Diagnostic status contains statuses from the latest received sensor information and timeout status.

Parameters

See receiver_params.yaml.

Sender

The radar sender listens for ROS twist messages as input, encodes them as CAN frames and publishes those as ROS messages.

Both radar input CAN signals only have a limited range:

• Ego velocity signal: [-81.92 m/s, 81.9175 m/s]
• Yaw rate signal: [-163.84 deg/s, 163.83 deg/s]

Input ROS messages with values outside of these ranges are discarded by the sender and not encoded / published. Furthermore, if the ROS twist message is too old (parameter allowed_age), it is discarded, too.

The relevant radar CAN frame IDs to publish the forward velocity and yaw rate are specified by the ego_velocity_id and yaw_rate_id parameters. These parameters need to correspond to the ego velocity and yaw rate CAN frame ID for the specific bus setup. If multiple radar systems are connected to the same bus, a single radar sender is sufficient as long as these radar systems expect the ego velocity and yaw rate CAN messages on the same IDs (in contrast to multiple receivers).

If the sender node does not receive anything valid within a configured period (parameter timeout), it will publish a diagnostic error on /diagnostics.

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Changelog for package off_highway_radar

0.13.0 (2026-11-02)

• Add hist, moving, near signals to point cloud

  The mentioned signals were omitted during the removal of pcl dependency.

  Adapted test cases for new signals.

• Fix node termination without error log by adding try/catch

  Uncaught exceptions from malformed/manipulated CAN frames in callback_can() previously caused the node to terminate silently. This adds a try/catch block to handle the error gracefully, write to the error log, and keep the node running.

  Tests were updated to reflect this change.

• Contributors: Darius Man

0.12.0 (2026-03-10)

• Update maintainers
• Remove PCL dependencies from off highway sensor drivers packages
• Contributors: Calin-Vasile Sopterean, Robin Petereit

0.11.0 (2026-01-26)

• Revert "Depend on ros_environment where needed (Jazzy version)" (#31)

  Revert "Depend on ros_environment where needed (Jazzy version) (#28)"

  This reverts commit 843890591d6db93ea883a83c0cecac298c5dba7f.

• Fix pcl_conversions linking error in ROS buildfarm (#30)

• Depend on ros_environment where needed (Humble version) (#27)

• Contributors: Marco A. Gutierrez, Michal Sojka

0.10.0 (2025-11-12)

• Update dependency declarations for target_link_libraries

• Fix issue 20, don't publish sensor data when there is a sensor timeout

• ament_target_dependencies is deprecated for Kilted and Rolling

  This syntax should work as of ROS 2 Foxy already

• Add pcl_point_xxx.hpp deprecation warning

• Contributors: Calin-Vasile Sopterean, Ferry Schoenmakers, Tim Clephas

0.9.0 (2025-06-16)

• Move PCL dependencies
• Update README
• Contributors: Calin-Vasile Sopterean, Gabriela Adriana Lapuste

0.8.0 (2025-03-24)

0.7.0 (2024-12-04)

• Do not force warnings as errors to fix rolling (#11)
• Contributors: Tim Clephas

0.6.3 (2024-07-09)

• Add missing dependency on PCL headers (#9)

  When I try to build this package on jazzy with rosdep, the PCL headers are missing. This package uses find_package(PCL) and includes it in the headers. Therefore I think it would be best to add it to the build_depend and build_export_depend tags of the package.xml files. In the buildfarm this is technically not needed because the PCL headers are a build_export_depend of pcl_conversions, but rosdep ignores this dependency so it misses the PCL headers.

• Contributors: Ramon Wijnands

0.6.2 (2024-06-13)

0.6.1 (2024-06-04)

0.6.0 (2024-05-14)

• Switch from deprecated signature to const shared_ptr reference while still supporting efficient intra-process communication

  See https://github.com/ros2/rclcpp/pull/1598.

• Convert radar driver from node to component

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