# Announcing: \`rviz\_robot\_description\_topic\`

**URL:** <https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/announcing-rviz-robot-description-topic/42417>\
**Category:** Projects\
**Tags:** rviz, ros1, migration\
**Created:** [March 7, 2025, 7:12am UTC](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/announcing-rviz-robot-description-topic/42417 "2025-03-07T07:12:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Timple](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/user_avatar/discourse.openrobotics.org/timple/32/4891_2.png) [@Timple](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/u/Timple)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2025, 7:12am UTC](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/announcing-rviz-robot-description-topic/42417/1 "2025-03-07T07:12:42Z")

</div>

A little overdue, but never too late for an announcement I guess 🙂 .

I’ve written a small rviz utility that can handle a `/robot_description` topic within ROS 1 rviz:

[rviz\_robot\_description\_topic](https://github.com/nobleo/rviz_robot_description_topic)

 ![rviz_robot_description_topic](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/ros/original/3X/9/5/95949a8e252a4113a8b7cf2e974d9928489efde0.png)

Think of migrating to ROS 2? Why not do it step by step!

In ROS 2 there are no global parameters anymore, so `/robot_description` became a topic. And this would even make sense for ROS 1 as now you can modify your description on the fly!

Little is holding you back from using a `/robot_description` topic already in ROS 1, just launch a minimal node like this:

```auto
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import rospy
from std_msgs.msg import String

rospy.init_node("robot_description_publisher")
pub = rospy.Publisher("robot_description", String, latch=True, queue_size=1)
pub.publish(rospy.get_param("robot_description"))
rospy.spin()

```

Optionally (if you want the dynamic part in ROS 1 already), you can subscribe to the topic instead of listening to the parameter:

```c++
  void robot_description_cb(const std_msgs::String::ConstPtr & msg)
  {
    ROS_INFO("Received new robot description");
    urdf::Model model;
    model.initString(msg->data);

```

Only thing remaining: `rviz` cannot display it 😔 . A PR was [rejected](https://github.com/ros-visualization/rviz/pull/1695), hence the creation of this package 🧁.

Just add it to your workspace and rviz supports the `/robot_description` topic as well. We’ve prepared and migrated several robots (ours and customers) like this already.

Best part: you can already start using **rviz2** because topics transparently go through the ros1\_bridge!

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_[View the full topic](https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/announcing-rviz-robot-description-topic/42417)._