NVIDIA Boosts Open Robotics with Major ROS 2 Contributions and Isaac ROS 4.0 Launch at ROSCon

NVIDIA is significantly advancing the open-source robotics ecosystem, announcing key contributions to the Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) framework and the release of Isaac ROS 4.0 at the ROSCon conference in Singapore. These efforts underscore NVIDIA's commitment to accelerating the development and deployment of next-generation physical AI robots.

The annual ROSCon event, held in Singapore through October 29, serves as a pivotal gathering for the global developer community behind ROS, the world's most widely adopted open framework for robot construction. NVIDIA utilized this platform to unveil collaborations with partners and the Open Source Robotics Alliance (OSRA), alongside new software designed to advance open standards and accelerate robotics development.

NVIDIA is actively supporting OSRA's new Physical AI Special Interest Group. This group focuses on critical areas such as real-time robot control, accelerated AI processing, and developing superior robotics tools for autonomous behavior.

These initiatives are integral to NVIDIA's broader strategy to establish ROS 2 as the premier open, high-performance framework for real-world robotic applications. The company is directly contributing GPU-aware abstractions to ROS 2, enabling the framework to efficiently manage various processors, including CPUs, integrated, and discrete GPUs. This ensures consistent, high-speed performance and future-proofs the ROS ecosystem against rapid hardware innovations.

Additionally, to assist developers in optimizing robot performance and reliability, NVIDIA is open-sourcing Greenwave Monitor. This valuable tool helps developers swiftly identify performance bottlenecks, significantly accelerating the robot development cycle.

Further strengthening its robotics portfolio, NVIDIA announced the availability of Isaac ROS 4.0. This new collection of ROS-compatible, GPU-accelerated libraries and AI models is now accessible on the NVIDIA Jetson Thor platform, tailored for deploying physical AI and robotics.

Developers can leverage Isaac CUDA-accelerated libraries, sophisticated AI models, and comprehensive workflows designed for advanced robot manipulation and mobility tasks.

NVIDIA's open-source contributions and platforms are already empowering a diverse array of developers and partners globally. These collaborations facilitate the training, simulation, and deployment of cutting-edge robots. Here are some key examples:

AgileX Robotics: Utilizes NVIDIA Jetson modules for AI autonomy and vision in its mobile robots. The company also employs NVIDIA Isaac Sim, a reference robotic simulation framework built on NVIDIA Omniverse, for robust simulation.

Canonical: Simplifies robot development with a demo of an open observability stack for ROS 2 devices on Ubuntu, now available for the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor platform, enhancing robotics and edge computing capabilities.

Ekumen Labs: Has integrated NVIDIA Isaac Sim into its robotics development workflows, enabling high-fidelity simulations for testing and validation of real systems, as well as photorealistic synthetic data generation.

Intrinsic: Integrates NVIDIA Isaac foundation models and Omniverse simulation tools into its Flowstate platform. This enables advanced robot-grasping, real-time digital twin visualization, and seamless AI-driven automation for industrial robotics.

KABAM Robotics: Its Matrix robot leverages NVIDIA Jetson Orin and NVIDIA Triton Inference Server on ROS 2 Jazzy, providing advanced security and facility management in complex outdoor environments.

Open Navigation: Will showcase NVIDIA technologies, including NVIDIA Isaac Sim and NVIDIA SWAGGER, during a keynote demonstrating advanced route navigation for autonomous mobile robots.

Robotec.ai: Collaborates with NVIDIA on a new ROS simulation standard, now integrated into Isaac Sim. This streamlines cross-simulator development and enables more robust, automated testing for robotics.

ROBOTIS: Employs NVIDIA Jetson for on-board computing and Isaac Sim for simulation and validation. Their AI Worker, powered by the Isaac GR00T N1.5 model, achieves greater autonomy and scalable edge AI.

Stereolabs: Its ZED cameras and ZED SDK offer full compatibility with the NVIDIA Jetson Thor platform. This supports high-performance, multi-camera capture, low-latency perception, and real-time spatial AI vision for general-purpose robotics.

From foundational contributions to powerful simulation tools and production-ready hardware, NVIDIA remains steadfast in its commitment. The company aims to equip the open-source community with the comprehensive platform necessary to construct the future of physical AI.