Biped leg odometry on ROS 2 Humble — is it supported? How was it done for Atlas?

[anemoiiaa]

Hi Pronto team 👋,

Context

I’m trying to run Pronto (ROS 2 Humble) for biped leg odometry. My robot has:

• 6 DoF per leg (two legs), frames: base_link → left_foot_1 / right_foot_1
• Binary foot contact from load cells (contact ON/OFF only; no continuous GRF/FT)
• Topics: /imu/data (sensor_msgs/Imu), /joint_states (sensor_msgs/JointState)
  Env: Ubuntu 22.04 + ROS 2 Humble.

What I tried

• Built the ros2 branch and launched pronto_ros2_node with my Xacro and a config enabling ins, bias_lock, and legodo.
• Launch succeeds, but legodo immediately fails with a URDF parsing error that looks quadruped-specific:

[URDF_MODEL_PARSER]: The Model parsing is performed corctly
[URDF_parser]: The leg LF has 0 joints, its not correct
[URDF_parser]: The leg LH has 0 joints, its not correct
[URDF_parser]: The leg RF has 0 joints, its not correct
[URDF_parser]: The leg RH has 0 joints, its not correct
[URDF_parser]: The leg parsed are 0, its not correct
[pronto]: NOT VALID MODEL
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::logic_error'
what(): not correct xacro file

From a quick look at the node, the current legodo path seems to assume quadruped naming (LF/LH/RF/RH, 12 joints like *_HAA/HFE/KFE) and errors out if those aren’t found.

Questions

1. Biped support: Is biped leg odometry currently supported in the ROS 2 branch?

   • If yes, could you point me to the expected parameter schema (e.g., how to provide left/right foot links and joint name lists) or an example config?
   • If not, is biped on the roadmap?

2. Atlas reference: You mentioned that Atlas used Pronto to extract leg odometry.

   • Was that done with ROS 1 (Melodic/Noetic) or with this ROS 2 branch?
   • Which components were used (e.g., INS + leg odometry, stance estimator), and how were contact signals provided (binary contact vs. force thresholds)?
   • Any details on joint naming / URDF expectations and parameter files would be extremely helpful.

3. Best path forward: If ROS 2/biped isn’t turnkey yet, would you accept a PR to make legodo configurable for bipeds? For example:

   • Add legodo.robot_type: biped|quadruped
   • Parameters for legodo.left/right.foot_link and legodo.left/right.joint_names[]
   • Optional left/right contact topics (Bool) for stance gating
   • Relax hard-coded LF/LH/RF/RH checks and build Pinocchio chains from the provided joint lists

I’m happy to prepare a minimal patch / example YAML and test on hardware. If there’s an existing branch or design you’d prefer me to follow, please let me know.

Active sensors in YAML: ["bias_lock","legodo","ins"] (INS works; failure only when legodo is enabled)

Frames: base_link, left_foot_1, right_foot_1

Contacts: two Bool topics (load-cell derived)

Thanks a lot for your time and for making Pronto available. Any guidance or pointers to prior biped setups would be greatly appreciated!

[mauricefallon]

Biped support: Is biped leg odometry currently supported in the ROS 2 branch?

Sorry - no Bipeds are not supported in ROS2. ROS2 is a relatively new effort for Pronto

Atlas reference: You mentioned that Atlas used Pronto to extract leg odometry.

Pronto was originally developed for Atlas when I worked in MIT 10 years ago. We used the LCM middleware (i.e. not ROS).
It was very heavily tested in the time - part of our team for the DARPA Robotics Challenge.

I'd certainly welcome a PR with a simple URDF and a rosbag which can be processed into pronto.
I do worry its quite a bit of effort to build a biped ROS2 node as it has been quite a lot of time since I worked with a Biped.

But functionally, it should work - its inputs are as you suggest: joint sensing, binary foot contacts and IMU data