Nvidia has released Isaac ROS 5.0, the latest version of its open-source software platform for robotics development. The update brings AI-agent capabilities to the ROS ecosystem, giving developers reusable workflows and tools to build, customise and deploy robot applications. The release is designed to simplify some of the more complex stages of robotics development while continuing to support Nvidia’s accelerated computing hardware. It also updates the platform with support for the latest versions of ROS and Ubuntu.
Nvidia Isaac ROS 5.0 Brings AI Agents to Robotics Development
Nvidia announced Isaac ROS 5.0 with new agent-ready documentation and reusable skills designed to help with different parts of robotics development. Developers can use these skills for tasks such as robot setup and manipulation, while AI agents can use the documentation to work with Isaac ROS tools and workflows. Nvidia says the new approach can help developers turn their requirements into working applications faster.
The update adds a FoundationStereo fine-tuning skill that enables an AI agent to help adapt the stereo perception model to a developer’s cameras, environment and robotics application. According to Nvidia, this can improve perception accuracy for a specific sensor configuration.
Nvidia has also introduced an agent-ready inference library for FoundationPose, which estimates and tracks the position and orientation of objects. The company claims the new implementation can track objects up to 5.5 times faster. Pick-and-place is another available agent-ready skill, giving developers a reusable workflow for a common robotic manipulation task.
The new skills therefore go beyond individual coding tasks, giving AI agents access to specific robotics models and workflows. Developers can use them for different stages of building a robotics application while continuing to work with the Isaac ROS platform.
Nvidia Isaac ROS 5.0 Adds Support for ROS Lyrical and Ubuntu 24.04
Isaac ROS 5.0 also adds support for ROS Lyrical and Ubuntu 24.04. Nvidia worked with the Open Source Robotics Alliance to contribute a standard data-handling interface to ROS Lyrical, which helps robotics software work across different types of computing hardware, including GPUs. Nvidia says the interface gives developers a consistent way to accelerate robotics applications across supported hardware.
The release also extends to Nvidia’s Jetson platform, from the Jetson Orin Nano to the higher-performance Jetson Thor. This gives developers a path from building and testing robotics applications to running increasingly complex workloads on compatible Jetson hardware.
Nvidia says Isaac ROS 5.0 is available now as free and open-source software.
