I am trying to connect to a robot running on an older ros version than the one I am using on my computer. So far, I have established an inelegant and unstable (in my eyes) solution and wanted to ask if somebody can suggest a better solution.

The robot runs ros-kinetic and my local computer runs ros-noetic. The two cannot communicate because message versions differ. I, therefore, used a docker image based on ubuntu 16.04 and installed ros-kinetic inside it. To communicate with the robot both based on roscpp and to use rviz, I had to run the docker container with --net host and --privileged and gui options outlined in this tutorial. Unfortunately, I only manage to run one ros-node per container. (If I launch another container via docker exec --container_name I cannot establish a connection with the ros network anymore.) I thus create an entirely new container and install all required dependencies to launch a second ros-node.

I have a feeling the set-up I described above is overly complicated. What is a good practice for communicating with a robot running on a different ros-distro than a locally installed distro? Do I maybe use containers (which seem to be an obvious solution to handle different ros versions) wrongly? I am grateful for any hints and suggestions!