NVIDIA Drives Next-Generation Robotics with Major Contributions to ROS 2 and Physical AI Initiatives

NVIDIA is significantly advancing the landscape of robotics development, unveiling crucial contributions to the Robot Operating System (ROS 2) framework and supporting the Open Source Robotics Alliance's new Physical AI Special Interest Group. These initiatives, announced at the global ROSCon conference in Singapore, aim to establish ROS 2 as the premier high-performance platform for real-world robotic applications and accelerate the deployment of next-generation physical AI.

The company's efforts are designed to make ROS 2 the open, high-performance framework of choice for sophisticated robotic deployments. This commitment underscores NVIDIA's vision for a future where robots are more autonomous, intelligent, and capable in diverse environments.

NVIDIA’s commitment to open standards is evident through its direct contributions to ROS 2. The company is integrating GPU-aware abstractions, enabling the framework to intelligently manage various processors, including CPUs and both integrated and discrete GPUs. This enhancement promises consistent, high-speed performance and future-proofs the ROS ecosystem, ensuring it keeps pace with rapid hardware innovation.

Additionally, NVIDIA has open-sourced Greenwave Monitor, a valuable tool designed to help developers quickly identify and resolve performance bottlenecks in their robot applications. This aims to significantly accelerate the development lifecycle for robotics engineers, fostering more robust and reliable systems.

Further expanding its robotics toolkit, NVIDIA announced the release of Isaac ROS 4.0. This new collection of ROS-compatible, GPU-accelerated libraries and AI models is now available for the NVIDIA Jetson Thor platform, a powerful system designed for deploying physical AI and robotics. Developers can access and leverage Isaac CUDA-accelerated libraries, advanced AI models, and comprehensive workflows to enhance robot manipulation and mobility capabilities, streamlining the creation of advanced robotic solutions.

NVIDIA's open-source contributions and accelerated computing technologies are already being adopted by a wide array of industry leaders to train, simulate, and deploy advanced robots. These collaborations highlight the real-world impact of NVIDIA's initiatives on the robotics ecosystem.

AgileX Robotics utilizes NVIDIA Jetson modules for AI autonomy and vision in its mobile robots. The company also employs NVIDIA Isaac Sim, an open-source robotic simulation framework built on NVIDIA Omniverse, for robust simulation and testing.

Canonical is simplifying robot development, demonstrating a fully open observability stack for ROS 2 devices on Ubuntu, now available for the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor platform, which is critical for robotics and edge computing.

Ekumen Labs has integrated NVIDIA Isaac Sim into its robotics development workflows, facilitating high-fidelity simulations for system testing and validation, alongside the generation of photorealistic synthetic data.

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

KABAM Robotics’ Matrix robot leverages NVIDIA Jetson Orin and NVIDIA Triton Inference Server on ROS 2 Jazzy. This setup supports advanced security and facility management tasks in complex outdoor environments.

At ROSCon, Open Navigation will showcase NVIDIA technologies, including NVIDIA Isaac Sim and NVIDIA SWAGGER. Founder Steve Macenski's keynote, "On Use Of Nav2 Route," will demonstrate advanced route navigation capabilities for autonomous mobile robots.

Robotec.ai and NVIDIA are collaborating on a new ROS simulation standard, now integrated within Isaac Sim. This initiative aims to streamline cross-simulator development and enable more robust, automated testing for robotics.

ROBOTIS utilizes NVIDIA Jetson for on-board computing and Isaac Sim for simulation and validation. Their AI Worker, powered by the Isaac GR00T N1.5 model, delivers enhanced autonomy and scalable edge AI solutions.

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

From foundational code contributions to powerful simulation tools and production-ready hardware, NVIDIA reiterates its strong commitment to providing the open-source community with the comprehensive platform necessary to build the future of physical AI. These advancements are crucial for developing the next generation of intelligent, autonomous machines.