Basilisk-ROS 2 Bridge

[E-Krantz]

Basilisk-ROS 2 Bridge

Hello Basilisk community! We want to share something we've been working on: a lightweight, open-source communication bridge between Basilisk and ROS 2.

Repo: https://github.com/DISCOWER/bsk-ros2-bridge
Paper: IEEE Xplore (presented at ISpaRo 2025 - best paper finalist) | arXiv

What it does

The bridge enables bidirectional data exchange between Basilisk simulations and ROS 2 nodes. Any Basilisk message can be connected; the user chooses which messages to publish or subscribe to in their Basilisk scenario script, and the bridge handles the rest on the ROS 2 side. It supports both real-time and accelerated time simulations, as well as single- and multi-spacecraft scenarios with namespace-aware topics.

How it works

On the Basilisk side, you add a standard Basilisk Python module (RosBridgeHandler) to your scenario script - no modifications to Basilisk's core are needed! The module connects to a ROS 2 bridge node over ZMQ, using the same protocol Basilisk already uses for Vizard, and automatically registers the configured messages as ROS 2 topics.

A minimal setup looks like:

# Add RosBridgeHandler module
from bsk_ros2_bridge import RosBridgeHandler
ros_bridge = RosBridgeHandler()

# Add publisher (Basilisk → ROS 2)
ros_bridge.add_ros_publisher('SCStatesMsgPayload', 'SCStatesMsgIn', 'sc_states', 'bskSat', max_rate=50.0)

# Add subscriber (ROS 2 → Basilisk)  
ros_bridge.add_ros_subscriber('CmdForceBodyMsgPayload', 'CmdForceBodyMsgOut', 'cmd_force', 'bskSat')

# Connect messages to Basilisk modules
ros_bridge.bskSat.SCStatesMsgIn.subscribeTo(scObject.scStateOutMsg)
thrForceMapping.cmdForceInMsg.subscribeTo(ros_bridge.CmdForceBodyMsgOut)

# Add the module to a simulation task
scSim.AddModelToTask(simTaskName, ros_bridge)

which would result in the following ROS 2 publisher and subscriber:
/bskSat/bsk/out/sc_states
/bskSat/bsk/in/cmd_force

Why it's useful

It makes Basilisk's high-fidelity orbital dynamics accessible to the broader robotics and control community without requiring users to rewrite their ROS 2 packages as Basilisk modules. Standard ROS 2 tools (rosbag, RViz, PlotJuggler) work directly with the simulation data and allow direct interactivity. Going from simulation to hardware is straightforward; we've run the same ROS 2 control nodes on both Basilisk and our ATMOS free-flyer testbed without modification.

We also provide auto-generated ROS 2 message definitions for Basilisk's payload types (automatically converted), and a demo MPC controller as a working example.

Feedback welcome

We'd appreciate any feedback, bug reports, or feature requests. If you give it a try, let us know how it goes!

Thanks to the Basilisk team for building such a solid and extensible framework.