Issues with discovering ROS2 topics when running Windows 11 and WSL2

Omniverse Isaac Sim
1

Version

6.0.0
5.1.0
5.0.0
4.5.0
4.2.0
4.1.0
4.0.0
4.5.0
2023.1.1
2023.1.0-hotfix.1
Other (please specify):

Operating System

Ubuntu 24.04
Ubuntu 22.04
Ubuntu 20.04
Windows 11, OS build 26200.8457
Windows 10
Other (please specify): I am running IsaacSim on Windows 11 and the ROS2 bridge to communicate with a WSL Ubuntu 22.04 instance.

GPU Information

  • Model: NVIDIA RTX A4000 Laptop
  • Driver Version: 591.86

Issues with discovering ROS2 topics when running Windows 11 and WSL2

Detailed Description

I am restricted to Windows 11, so I installed IsaacSim 5.1.0 on Windows 11 and use Ubuntu 22.04 running on WSL2 to interact with ROS2 messages on ROS2 Humble. I followed the installation guide, and set up port forwarding, set environment variables (using set in command line, not with the selector app), and enabled the ROS2 bridge extension in the app, but when running IsaacSim following the simple clock publisher tutorial, my WSL2 instances were not able to discover any IsaacSim topics. I am not sure if my company has security protections that are stopping me, but I verified that a FastDDS simple publisher and subscriber application worked using both simple discovery and discovery server methods between Windows 11 and WSL2 Ubuntu, so that doesn’t seem to be the case (I tried using both simple discovery and a discovery server for IsaacSim, and nothing came through).

Additional Information

What I’ve Tried

I have looked at this post and tried mirrored mode, which seems to cause more issues. I did not look very far into it due to the statement that it is not supported. I did also check ROS_DOMAIN_ID on both sides and the RMW_IMPLEMENTATION variables. I also followed the “multiple machines” instruction.

Related Issues

My wsl2 is not getting ros2 nodes from IsaacSim - Omniverse / Isaac Sim - NVIDIA Developer Forums

IsaacSim 5.1 ROS2 connection issue when running WSL2 in mirrored mode - Omniverse / Isaac Sim - NVIDIA Developer Forums

3

Hi,

Im the guy from the original post.
As Isaac Sim 6.0 (came out last week) now supports ros2 in windows via pixi, I’d try this!
For me, this worked out of the box without any issues.

4

Hi @jack.bacarra Are you able to try with IsaacSim 6.0, per above suggestion? That may be the best way forward!

5

I will attempt this installation tomorrow. Before I do, what is the best approach if I wanted to continue using Ubuntu 22.04, since the documentation seems to imply I’ll need to switch to 24.04?

6

22.04 should be fine.
Any luck with this?

7

ROS2 in Windows via Pixi’s Ubuntu 24.04 did work properly (no communication with WSL2 Ubuntu 24.04). However, I do prefer Ubuntu 22.04 which isn’t able to use Pixi because ROS2 Jazzy is not supported, but that one still does not detect any messages when using WSL2 and Windows IsaacSim 6.0.

8

You can keep Humble on 22.04 and talk to Jazzy on Windows. ROS 2, so long as you’re using standard messages (clock, sensor_msgs, tf2, etc).

The distro pairing shouldn’t be a blocker — discovery across the WSL2 boundary is. That’s why even native pixi ROS2 on Windows didn’t see your topics: default multicast discovery doesn’t cross WSL2’s NAT. Use the Fast DDS discovery server you already confirmed works in your first post — run it on the Windows host and set ROS_DISCOVERY_SERVER (plus ROS_SUPER_CLIENT=true) on both sides.