Isaac ROS RealSense Setup#

Camera Compatibility#

RealSense Model	Supported?
D455	✓
D435i	✓
D415	✗

Note

It is required to use RealSense firmware version 5.16.0.1, librealsense SDK version v2.56.3 and realsense-ros driver version r/4.56.3. Any deviation from these versions may break or degrade the performance of Isaac ROS examples.
It is required to use USB3 ports and cables to run the cameras at higher resolutions and frame rates that some applications expect.
For best results we suggest increasing the maximum Linux kernel receive buffer size as detailed in DDS tuning.
The realsense-viewer tool has performance issues when running multiple cameras on the Jetson platforms. However the RealSense ROS drivers work fine with multiple cameras.

Setup Instructions#

This tutorial assumes that you have completed the instructions in Developer Environment Setup.

Start with the RealSense camera unplugged. Then, add RealSense udev rules to your host machine.

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/realsenseai/librealsense/v2.56.3/config/99-realsense-libusb.rules && \
sudo mv 99-realsense-libusb.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/ && \
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger && echo "Successfully added udev rules"

Verify that you have Successfully added udev rules in the output, which indicates all commands were successful.

Configure the Isaac ROS environment to include librealsense SDK and realsense-ros:

Docker

Create a file called ~/.config/isaac-ros-cli/config.yaml with the following content:

mkdir -p ~/.config/isaac-ros-cli
touch ~/.config/isaac-ros-cli/config.yaml

docker:
  image:
    additional_image_keys:
      - realsense

Virtual Environment

Define the following configuration variables to specify the versions used for the installation:
```
LIBREALSENSE_VERSION=v2.56.3
REALSENSE_ROS_VERSION=r/4.56.3
```

Download the RealSense setup scripts from the Isaac ROS CLI repository:

mkdir -p /tmp/realsense-setup && cd /tmp/realsense-setup
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NVIDIA-ISAAC-ROS/isaac-ros-cli/release-4.1/docker/scripts/install-realsense-dependencies.sh
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/NVIDIA-ISAAC-ROS/isaac-ros-cli/release-4.1/docker/scripts/build-librealsense.sh

Install the CUDA toolkit:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y cuda-toolkit-13-0

Install RealSense dependencies:

cd /tmp/realsense-setup
chmod +x install-realsense-dependencies.sh
sudo ./install-realsense-dependencies.sh

Build and install librealsense from source:

cd /tmp/realsense-setup
chmod +x build-librealsense.sh
./build-librealsense.sh -v ${LIBREALSENSE_VERSION} --force_rsusb

Clone the realsense-ros repository:

cd /tmp
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/realsenseai/realsense-ros.git -b ${REALSENSE_ROS_VERSION}

Install realsense-ros build dependencies:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y devscripts dh-make python3-bloom
rosdep update
rosdep install -y --from-paths /tmp/realsense-ros --skip-keys librealsense2 --ignore-src

Build and install realsense2_camera_msgs:

cd /tmp/realsense-ros/realsense2_camera_msgs
bloom-generate rosdebian
fakeroot debian/rules binary
cd .. && sudo apt-get install -y ./*.deb && rm ./*.deb

Build and install realsense2_description:

cd /tmp/realsense-ros/realsense2_description
bloom-generate rosdebian
fakeroot debian/rules binary
cd .. && sudo apt-get install -y ./*.deb && rm ./*.deb

Build and install realsense2_camera:

cd /tmp/realsense-ros/realsense2_camera
bloom-generate rosdebian
sed -i "s/dh_shlibdeps -/dh_shlibdeps --dpkg-shlibdeps-params=--ignore-missing-info -/g" debian/rules
sed -i "s/ros-jazzy-librealsense2, //g" debian/control
fakeroot debian/rules binary
cd .. && sudo apt-get install -y ./*.deb

Clean up the build environment:

rm -rf /tmp/realsense-ros
rm -rf /tmp/realsense-setup

Bare Metal

Define the following configuration variables to specify the versions used for the installation:
```
LIBREALSENSE_VERSION=v2.56.3
REALSENSE_ROS_VERSION=r/4.56.3
```