Digital Event Horizon
NVIDIA has recently announced groundbreaking advances in open-source physics simulation, open foundation models, and development frameworks, including Newton Physics Engine, Isaac GR00T N1.6, NVIDIA Isaac Lab, and Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD). These advancements aim to accelerate robot learning through unified OpenUSD simulation workflows, revolutionizing the field of robotics.
Developers are harnessing these technologies to build physically accurate virtual worlds where robots can practice and perfect their skills before transferring them to real-world applications. This development has significant implications for industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, and transportation, enabling robots to navigate unpredictable environments in real time.
Get more information about NVIDIA's latest advancements in robotics and OpenUSD simulation workflows by exploring resources on the NVIDIA website.
NVIDIA has announced advancements in open-source physics simulation, open foundation models, and development frameworks. The Newton physics engine aims to advance robot learning with GPU-accelerated simulations. The Isaac GR00T N1.6 model integrates NVIDIA Cosmos Reason for deep-thinking and action planning. NVIDIA Isaac Lab provides advanced whole-body control and teleoperation for robotics researchers and developers. OpenUSD is being adopted by leading humanoid and robotics developers for synthetic data generation and digital twin creation.
NVIDIA has recently announced groundbreaking advances in open-source physics simulation, open foundation models, and development frameworks, including Newton Physics Engine, Isaac GR00T N1.6, NVIDIA Isaac Lab, and Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD). These advancements have significant implications for the field of robotics, enabling developers to accelerate robot learning through unified OpenUSD simulation workflows.
The Newton physics engine is an open-source, GPU-accelerated physics engine that aims to advance robot learning. Built on top of NVIDIA Warp and OpenUSD, it enables robots to learn complex tasks more precisely while working seamlessly with robot learning frameworks like MuJoCo Playground and NVIDIA Isaac Lab. This development is particularly significant for humanoid robots, which are pushing today’s physics engines to the limit.
The latest Isaac GR00T N1.6 open robot foundation model, available soon on Hugging Face, integrates NVIDIA Cosmos Reason, an open reasoning vision language model built for physical AI. Cosmos Reason serves as the robot’s deep-thinking brain and transforms vague instructions into step-by-step action plans using prior knowledge, common sense, and physics understanding.
NVIDIA Isaac Lab is now available as an early developer release with a host of new features to robotics researchers and developers, including advanced whole-body control and expanded teleoperation for data collection. This framework builds on top of NVIDIA Isaac Sim and OpenUSD, providing a scalable and interoperable data standard that enables developers to build physically accurate virtual worlds where robots can practice and perfect their skills before transferring them to real-world applications.
OpenUSD is also being adopted by leading humanoid and robotics developers, including Agility Robotics, Lightwheel, Mentee, and Universal Robots. These companies are harnessing OpenUSD as the foundation for developing synthetic data generation pipelines in Isaac Sim, creating interoperable digital twins of manufacturing environments that validate cobot safety protocols and optimize human-robot interaction across diverse industrial settings.
Developers such as Dylan Tobin have also adopted OpenUSD by creating an AI chatbot trained on Isaac Sim workflows to help developers navigate Omniverse more efficiently. This is just one example of how the open-source physics engine and framework are being used to accelerate robot learning.
Another significant development is the use of Wandelbots NOVA, an Isaac Sim-integrated, no-code teaching platform that enables assembly workers to train robots to pick-and-place in a virtual twin before deployment at Volkswagen’s Transparent Factory in Dresden. This marks another example of how OpenUSD and its associated technologies are being used to accelerate physical AI development.
In addition to these advancements, NVIDIA has also announced a host of events and resources for developers looking to get started with OpenUSD. These include upcoming livestreams for Newton beta demonstrations, as well as NVIDIA Robotics office hours sessions that demonstrate how Brev makes it easy to run Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab on Omniverse.
Furthermore, NVIDIA has launched an industry-recognized OpenUSD Development certification program, offered at no additional charge to conference attendees. This demonstrates the company’s commitment to providing developers with the resources they need to accelerate robot learning and simulation performance through OpenUSD.
Finally, NVIDIA has highlighted the growing adoption of its technologies by leading robotics companies, including Agility Robotics, Lightwheel, Mentee, Universal Robots, Inbolt, and Wandelbots. These companies are harnessing OpenUSD as a foundation for their own innovations in robotics navigation, control, and reinforcement learning, further underscoring the significance of this development.
In conclusion, NVIDIA’s recent advancements in open-source physics simulation, open foundation models, and development frameworks have significant implications for the field of robotics. The Newton physics engine, Isaac GR00T N1.6, NVIDIA Isaac Lab, and OpenUSD are all working together seamlessly to enable developers to accelerate robot learning through unified OpenUSD simulation workflows.
This is a critical moment for physical AI development, as robots require humanlike dexterity, perception, cognition, and whole-body coordination to navigate unpredictable real-world environments in real time. The adoption of these technologies by leading robotics companies and developers will be crucial in unlocking the full potential of physical AI and transforming industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, and transportation.
By staying up-to-date with NVIDIA news and exploring resources such as the NVIDIA Omniverse website, developers can get plugged into the world of OpenUSD and unlock new possibilities for robot learning and simulation performance.
Related Information:
https://www.digitaleventhorizon.com/articles/Accelerating-Robot-Learning-How-OpenUSD-is-Revolutionizing-Physical-AI-Development-deh.shtml
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/newton-physics-engine-openusd/
https://webdomino.net/index.php/nvidia/into-the-omniverse-open-source-physics-engine-and-openusd-advance-robot-learning/
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/openusd-advances-physical-ai/
Published: Tue Sep 30 10:52:16 2025 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
