Setting a robot name (namespace) during install breaks the web UI — no namespace support in frontend

[arresejo]

Environment: Jetson Orin Nano, JetPack 6.2.1, repo @ b646f5e, Unitree Go2, robot name set to robotdog during install.sh

Summary

The installer offers an optional robot name, which becomes a ROS2 namespace for all nodes (e.g. /robotdog/front_camera). When set, the web dashboard is broken: battery stays at 0%, cameras are stuck on "Initializing camera...", and the Health page shows every node as unknown. With an empty robot name everything works — so the bug is invisible to most users, but anyone who fills in the optional name gets a non-functional system.

There are two independent root causes.

Root cause 1 — bot_state_machine uses absolute lifecycle names (fix available)

lifecycle_manager.cpp::create_comms() builds its lifecycle clients/subscriptions with absolute names:

"/" + n.name + "/transition_event"
"/" + n.name + "/change_state"
"/" + n.name + "/get_state"

The leading / bypasses the node's namespace. The state machine itself is correctly namespaced by its launch file (from robot_config.yaml), so it looks for /front_camera/get_state while the real service is at /robotdog/front_camera/get_state. Every get_state fails, all statuses stay unknown, and coordinated bringup never activates anything.

Log signature (repeated for every managed node):

[LifecycleManager] bring_down: missing state for front_camera (get_state failed?)

Fix: drop the leading / so the names resolve relative to the state machine's own namespace. Behavior is unchanged for unnamed robots (namespace / produces identical names). Verified on the hardware above: with the fix and a namespaced stack, 21/22 nodes activate correctly.

Root cause 2 — frontend has no namespace support

Even with the state machine fixed, the web UI hardcodes root-level topic/service paths. getRosTopic() in frontend/src/utils/ros/topics-and-services.tsx returns '/' + topic:

export function getRosTopic(typeKey, isDummy = false): string {
  const topic = topicsMessages[typeKey];
  return `${isDummy ? '/dummy' : ''}/${topic}`;
}

So the frontend subscribes to /battery, /compressed_camera, /compressed_back_camera, … which have zero publishers when the stack runs under a namespace. Battery, cameras and controls are all dead. Fixing this properly means threading a namespace prefix through topics-and-services.tsx, topics-and-services-v2.tsx and the ~25 hooks/components that consume them.

Reproduction

1. Run sudo ./install.sh and set any non-empty robot name (e.g. robotdog)
2. Boot the stack and open the dashboard, connect to the robot
3. Battery stays 0%, cameras never initialize, Health page shows all nodes unknown

Workaround

Set robot_name: "" in botbrain_ws/robot_config.yaml and restart the stack — all nodes relaunch at the root namespace and the UI works.

Suggestion

Until the frontend supports namespaces, either warn in the installer that setting a robot name breaks the web UI, or hide the option. I'm opening a PR with the bot_state_machine fix (root cause 1); root cause 2 needs a maintainer decision on how the namespace should reach the frontend (e.g. stored per-robot in the robots table alongside the address).