Attention: Answers.ros.org is deprecated as of August the 11th, 2023. Please visit robotics.stackexchange.com to ask a new question. This site will remain online in read-only mode during the transition and into the foreseeable future. Selected questions and answers have been migrated, and redirects have been put in place to direct users to the corresponding questions on Robotics Stack Exchange. Additional details are available here.

Revision history [back]

ROS is designed, as far as I know, to not care whether Topics exist or not. ROS will let Subscribers sit all day waiting for data on non-existant Topics.

One solution is to set up a watchdog style timer that looks for data on the topic and lets you know if a certain period of time occurs without any new data coming in.

ROS Answers is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license.