Repository Migration Notice

[!IMPORTANT] This repository is moving to the RAI-Opensource GitHub organization in about 2 weeks from April 9, 2026 (UTC).

Current status: pre-migration. Migration target org: https://github.com/RAI-Opensource

What to do now:

• Watch this repository for the final cutover update and destination repository link.
• Plan to update your git remote after the move:

  git remote set-url origin <new-repository-url>
  

• If you maintain downstream docs/scripts, prepare to update links from this repository to the new org.

Spot ROS 2

Overview

spot_ros2 is a set of ROS 2 packages for interacting with Boston Dynamics’ Spot, based off the the ROS 1 equivalent. Its spot_driver package is designed to bridge the core functionality of the Spot SDK to ROS 2, and exposes topics, services, and actions necessary to control Spot and receive state information (such as images). Currently, this repository corresponds to version 5.0.1 of the spot-sdk.

Requirements

This repository is supported for use with Ubuntu 22.04 and ROS 2 Humble on both ARM64 and AMD64 platforms.

Installation

Set up your ROS 2 workspace, and clone the repository in the src directory:

mkdir -p <ROS workspace>/src && cd <ROS workspace>/src
git clone https://github.com/bdaiinstitute/spot_ros2.git

Then, initialize and install the submodules.

cd spot_ros2
git submodule init
git submodule update

Next, run the following script to install the necessary Boston Dynamics packages (both Python and C++) and ROS dependencies. The install script takes the optional argument

```; it otherwise defaults to an AMD64 install.

```bash
./install_spot_ros2.sh
or
./install_spot_ros2.sh --arm64

From here, build and source your ROS 2 workspace.

cd <ROS workspace>
colcon build --symlink-install
source install/setup.bash

Alternative - Docker Image

Alternatively, a Dockerfile is available that prepares a ready-to-run ROS2 Humble install with the Spot driver installed. The Docker image can be built and minimally run with the following commands:

cd <ROS workspace>/src/spot_ros2
docker build . -t spot_ros2
docker run -it spot_ros2:latest

The following flags may be useful for extra functionality when running the image. | Flag | Use | | ——– | ————— | | --runtime nvidia + --gpus all | Use the NVIDIA Container Runtime to run the container with GPU acceleration | | -e DISPLAY | Bind your display to the container in order to run GUI apps. Note that you will need to allow the Docker container to connect to your X11 server, which can be done in a number of ways ranging from disabling X11 authentication entirely, or by allowing the Docker daemon specifically to access your display server. | | --network host | Use the host network directly. May help resolve issues connecting to Spot Wifi | | --build-arg EXPERIMENTAL_ZENOH_RMW=TRUE | Enable experimental rmw_zenoh middleware. May result in issues we cannot address. |

Experimental - RMW ZENOH Middleware

Disclaimer: The RMW ZENOH middleware is now available for installation with the driver. Please note that this feature is currently under experimental testing and may result in issues that we cannot address. To use the zenoh implementation, please refer to the rmw_zenoh documentation.

Packages

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