teleop_panel

teleop_panel is a simple RViz panel plugin for manual robot teleoperation on ROS 2.

It provides:

• A 2D drive widget inside RViz
• An editable command topic field with live, filtered topic suggestions
• Command message type selection (Twist / TwistStamped)
• Enable/disable control of the publisher
• Linear and angular velocity scaling

The plugin is intended to replace the old teleoperation panel from rviz_plugin_tutorials with a package maintained in the Robotnik workspace.

Build

Build the package in a ROS 2 workspace with:

colcon build --packages-select teleop_panel

Use in RViz

Once the workspace is built and sourced, the panel can be added from RViz as:

Panels -> Add New Panel -> teleop_panel/Teleop

In Robotnik simulation, the provided RViz configurations already include this panel.

Command topic

The Command topic field is an editable combo box:

• You can always type any topic name manually, even before the target node exists. The typed topic is used as-is for publishing.
• The drop-down lists topic suggestions discovered on the ROS 2 graph. A topic is suggested only when at least one node subscribes to it with the selected command message type (geometry_msgs/msg/Twist in Twist mode, geometry_msgs/msg/TwistStamped in TwistStamped mode), so the list focuses on command topics that something is actually consuming.
• Suggestions refresh automatically every few seconds and immediately when the message type changes. The refresh never overwrites or auto-selects your current topic — it only updates the drop-down.

Suggestions are a convenience only; they do not restrict what you can publish to.

Message type

The panel exposes a Message type combo box with two options:

• Twist — publishes geometry_msgs/msg/Twist. This is the default, kept for backward compatibility with existing setups.
• TwistStamped — publishes geometry_msgs/msg/TwistStamped. Useful for newer ros2_control / diff_drive_controller / Nav2-style setups that expect a stamped command with a header.

When TwistStamped is selected, an extra Frame id row appears. Its value (default base_link) is written to header.frame_id, and header.stamp is filled with the current ROS time. The frame id row is hidden and the frame id is unused while Twist is selected.

The two screenshots below show the panel in each mode — note how the Frame id row only appears in TwistStamped mode:

Twist mode	TwistStamped mode

The selected message type and frame id are saved and restored with the RViz configuration. Older config files without these fields load as Twist / base_link.

Notes

• The panel publishes geometry_msgs/msg/Twist or geometry_msgs/msg/TwistStamped depending on the selected command message type
• The topic must match the robot command topic used in the current simulation or deployment
• If multiple teleoperation sources publish to the same topic at the same time, they can interfere with each other