Enable basic RPLIDAR handling with rplidar-ros2 - Qualcomm Dragonwing Documentation

The rplidar-ros2 sample application provides basic device handling for the 2D laser scanner RPLIDAR A1/A2/A3/S1/S2/S3.

Pipeline flow for `rplidar-ros2`

The figure shows the pipeline of the rplidar-ros2 sample. The sample application gets the driver data from the rplidar SDK, and then publishes the /scan topic.

Figure : rplidar-ros2 pipeline

ROS topics used in the `rplidar-ros2` pipeline

ROS topic	Message type	Published/Subscribed by	Description
`/scan`	`sensor_msgs::msg::LaserScan`	Published by `rplidar-ros2`	The `/scan` topic publishes the laser scan data from the RPLIDAR.

Prerequisites

You have Set up the device according to Set up the environment for running sample applications.
Connect the power supply and USB port of RPLIDAR A3M1.

Run out-of-the-box `rplidar-ros2`

To set up the QIR SDK and ROS2 environment on the device and run rplidar-ros2, start a terminal and run the following commands:

ssh root@[ip-addr]
(ssh) source /usr/share/qirp-setup.sh
(ssh) ros2 launch rplidar_ros rplidar_a3_launch.py

Example terminal logs showing successful node startup

[INFO] [launch]: All log files can be found below /home/ubuntu/.ros/log/2026-08-12-02-11-07-846867-ubuntu-3237
[INFO] [launch]: Default logging verbosity is set to INFO
[INFO] [rplidar_node-1]: process started with pid [3241]
[rplidar_node-1] [INFO] [1786500668.361267056] [rplidar_node]: RPLidar running on ROS2 package rplidar_ros. RPLIDAR SDK Version:2.0.0
[rplidar_node-1] [INFO] [1786500668.407724891] [rplidar_node]: RPLidar S/N: FBE59AF2C1EA9FC0BEEB9CF374363200
[rplidar_node-1] [INFO] [1786500668.407786032] [rplidar_node]: Firmware Ver: 1.26
[rplidar_node-1] [INFO] [1786500668.407803166] [rplidar_node]: Hardware Rev: 6
[rplidar_node-1] [INFO] [1786500668.459542330] [rplidar_node]: RPLidar health status : 0
[rplidar_node-1] [INFO] [1786500668.459631645] [rplidar_node]: RPLidar health status : OK.
[rplidar_node-1] [INFO] [1786500668.759812227] [rplidar_node]: current scan mode: Sensitivity, sample rate: 16 Khz, max_distance: 25.0 m, scan frequency:10.0 Hz,

To check the topic output, run the following command:

ros2 topic echo /scan

Result:

header:
  stamp:
    sec: 1786520383
    nanosec: 374856817
  frame_id: laser
angle_min: -3.1241390705108643
angle_max: 3.1415927410125732
angle_increment: 0.0034828970674425364
time_increment: 0.0009069791412912309
scan_time: 1.6316554546356201
range_min: 0.15000000596046448
range_max: 25.0
ranges:
- 0.37400001287460327
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.37400001287460327
- 0.37400001287460327
- 0.37400001287460327
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.375
- 0.37599998712539673
- 0.37599998712539673
- 0.375
- 0.37599998712539673
...

RViz visualization screenshots showing

Figure : visualization on RViz

​Pipeline flow for rplidar-ros2

​ROS topics used in the rplidar-ros2 pipeline

​Prerequisites

​Run out-of-the-box rplidar-ros2

Pipeline flow for `rplidar-ros2`

ROS topics used in the `rplidar-ros2` pipeline

Prerequisites

Run out-of-the-box `rplidar-ros2`