OSCP open-sources a ROS 2 driver for its MK2 inertial measurement units

Released under the MIT licence for ROS 2 Humble and Jazzy. The Montreal company is a silver sponsor at ROSCon Global in Toronto, booth 29.

TORONTO, Sept. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Robots that work indoors never had a satellite fix to lose. Warehouse floors, inspection tunnels, greenhouses and building interiors are GNSS-denied by default, and a ROS 2 stack navigating there is running on wheel odometry and an inertial measurement unit. When the wheels slip or the surface changes, heading is the first thing to go, and heading error is set by the gyroscope.

OSCPS Motion Sensing Inc., operating as OSCP, today released an open-source ROS 2 driver for its MK2 family of inertial measurement units. The driver is published under the MIT licence at github.com/OSCPS/oscp_ros2_driver, with documentation at docs.oscp.com. OSCP is a silver sponsor of ROSCon Global in Toronto, September 22 to 24, and is exhibiting at booth 29.

The driver connects an MK2-family unit to a ROS 2 system over RS-422 or CAN-FD and publishes on standard sensor_msgs topics, so the unit feeds an existing navigation stack without custom parsing work. It ships as three packages: the node itself, a library handling COBS decoding and frame definitions, and a set of OSCP message types stamped with the unit's internal clock. Configuration is a YAML file, and the node exposes services for querying configuration, stationary bias calibration, zeroing orientation and applying a magnetometer calibration.

It supports ROS 2 Humble and Jazzy on Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04. Builders can start with the MK2M2, a MEMS unit measuring 40 by 40 by 25 millimetres, weighing 75 grams and drawing 1.2 watts, and move up to the MK2E2, which replaces the Z-axis MEMS gyroscope with a photonic one while keeping MEMS on X and Y, on the same driver and the same interfaces.

"The ROS community does not need another sensor that arrives with a datasheet and a serial protocol," said Kazem Zandi, founder and chief executive of OSCP. "It needs the thing to publish clean data into the stack people already run. We wrote the driver so that integration stops being a project of its own."

The company's published road test is the case for the photonic option. Over 21 minutes through downtown Montreal, with satellite positioning denied and heading coming from the gyroscope alone on a one-hertz speed input, the MK2E2 finished 5.7 metres from ground truth. An MK2M2, OSCP's MEMS unit, ran the same drive on identical aiding and finished 20.5 metres out. Both units carry the same 0.5 degrees per hour minimum in-run bias on their datasheets. What changed was the Z-axis gyroscope. The full write-up, including the route and the error over time, is at oscp.com/case_studies/photonic-vs-mems-proven-real-roads.

Vibration is the second reason to look at the photonic axis. MEMS gyroscopes are g-sensitive, so bias error grows under vibration and sustained acceleration, which is the normal working life of a legged platform or a vehicle on rough ground. A photonic gyroscope has no proof mass to shake. OSCP is characterising the MK2 family under vibration and will publish the results.

For robots that run for hours without a fix, there is a third option. The MK2Z, currently a prototype, puts a navigation-grade optical gyroscope on the heading axis, at 0.005 degrees per hour typical, roughly two orders of magnitude better than the MEMS heading gyro in the drive above. It is larger and draws more power, at 475 grams and 4.5 watts, and it runs on the same driver and the same interfaces. Mines, tunnels, subsea vehicles and large indoor sites are where that trade starts to pay.

"We put it out under MIT because a driver you cannot read is a driver you cannot trust," said Thibaut Gravey, vice-president, product. "Integrators change the timing, change the frame they publish in, change how they want the thing calibrated. All of that is easier when the source is in front of you."

The driver was written by Rayan Raad, a robotics engineering intern at OSCP, who is at booth 29 for the conference.

OSCP sensors are designed and manufactured in Montreal. The team is at booth 29 at ROSCon Global, Sheraton Centre Toronto, September 22 to 24, and is happy to talk through an integration. To arrange a meeting, contact [email protected].

ABOUT OSCP

OSCPS Motion Sensing Inc., operating as OSCP, designs and manufactures photonic gyroscopes and inertial measurement units. Founded in 2015 and based in Montréal, Québec, it builds sensors that deliver tactical-grade accuracy at a fraction of the size, weight and power of traditional optical gyroscopes, for navigation where GNSS is jammed, degraded or unavailable. Its customers work in space, defence, marine and subsea, rail, robotics and ground autonomy. OSCP products are made in Canada and are ITAR-free.