The release of the Conduit iOS app—transform your Apple devices into ROS 2 sensor publishers

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:rocket: Excited to announce the release of the Conduit iOS app!

Transform your iPhone/iPad (and soon Mac) into a powerful sensor suite for ROS 2 robotics.

After months of deep technical work on wire format compatibility and real-time performance optimization, I’m thrilled to share this tool with the robotics community.

:bullseye: What Conduit Does:

Conduit streams 12 types of high-quality sensor data from iOS devices directly to ROS 2 nodes using zenoh-pico:

  • IMU (100Hz) - accelerometer + gyroscope
  • LiDAR (10Hz) - iPhone 12 Pro+ depth sensing
  • Camera (15Hz) - multiple camera support
  • GPS, Magnetometer, Barometer, Illuminance
  • Microphone, Battery state, Game controllers, Proximity, Thermal

:microscope: Technical Highlights:

  • Direct rmw_zenoh_cpp communication (no bridge required)
  • Native support for ROS 2 Humble, Jazzy, Kilted, and Rolling
  • Runtime wire format detection and auto-configuration
  • Low-latency, reliable data streaming
  • Cross-platform: iOS 16+, iPadOS, visionOS, and soon Mac Catalyst

:light_bulb: Why This Matters:

Modern smartphones pack incredible sensors, yet they remain underutilized in robotics development. Before investing in expensive dedicated hardware, why not leverage the high-quality sensors you already carry?

This project is designed for:

  • :white_check_mark: Robotics researchers prototyping algorithms
  • :white_check_mark: Education - accessible sensors for teaching ROS 2
  • :white_check_mark: Hobbyists building innovative projects
  • :white_check_mark: Anyone who needs mobile sensor data in their ROS 2 system
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is their anything similar for android i want to try that out.

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I’ll need to procure Android hardware and get comfortable with Kotlin, but once I’ve wrapped up iOS app development, I’d like to give it a shot!

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Yes, there is!

It’s been a while since I worked on this, so anyone who’s interested to contribute, please let me know.

And coincidentally, I also ported ROS 2 to iOS about 8 years ago :sweat_smile:

I you want to know more about the process and the work involved, I gave a talk about running ROS 2 natively on iOS and Android at ROSCon 2018:

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@youtalk So cool! Do you have any plans on open sourcing this and/or contributing to GitHub - esteve/ros2_objc: Objective C and iOS bindings for ROS2 ? It’d be great to revive the ROS 2 on iOS project.

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You are always my hero. A few years ago, I struggled to use the ros2_objc, and ultimately I wasn’t able to get it working. This time, I decided to rewrite everything from scratch as a pure Swift package:

It now supports not only DDS but also Zenoh directly. You can run builds on iOS/macOS/Linux. Please take a look.