NVIDIA Advances Simulation for Robots

At CES, NVIDIA announced major updates to Isaac Sim, its robotics simulation tool to build and test virtual robots in realistic environments across varied operating conditions. Now accessible from the cloud, Isaac Sim is built on NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for creating and operating metaverse applications.

AI-Driven Capabilities for Roboticists 

Isaac Sim’s new people simulation capability allows human characters to be added to a warehouse or manufacturing facility and tasked with executing familiar behaviors— like stacking packages or pushing carts. Many ocommon behaviors are already supported, so simulating them is as simple as issuing a command.

To minimize the difference between results observed in a simulated world versus those seen in the real world, it’s imperative to have physically accurate sensor models.

Using NVIDIA RTX technology, Isaac Sim can now render physically accurate data from sensors in real time. In the case of an RTX-simulated lidar, ray tracing provides more accurate sensor data under various lighting conditions or in response to reflective materials.

Isaac Sim also provides numerous new simulation-ready 3D assets, to build physically accurate simulated environments. Everything from warehouse parts to popular robots come ready to go, so developers and users can quickly start building.

New capabilities for robotics researchers include advances in Isaac Gym for reinforcement learning and Isaac Cortex for collaborative robot programming. Also, a new tool, Isaac ORBIT, provides simulation operating environments and benchmarks for robot learning and motion planning.

Isaac Sim upgrades support for ROS 2 Humble and Windows. All of the Isaac ROS software can now be used in simulation.

Isaac Platform Capabilities Drive Adoption 

The large and complex robotics ecosystem spans multiple industries, from logistics and manufacturing to retail, energy, sustainable farming and more.

The end-to-end Isaac robotics platform provides advanced AI and simulation software as well as accelerated compute capabilities to the robotics ecosystem.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.