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NVIDIA Robotics Simulation Program -- Isaac Gym - Preview Release
This article talks about some of the historical development of NVIDIA's robotics simulation program.
NVIDIA's products were initially only graphics cards, but sold sold found that there are many people using the CPU to engage in graphical design, such as OpenGL, so the old Huang was inspired, and from then on, NVIDIA's graphics cards to develop computing interfaces to support graphical computing, and slowly NVIDIA's graphics cards were adopted by supercomputing organizations in the United States, China, and other countries, and so the NVIDIA company appeared at home! The game graphics card and enterprise computing graphics card two hardware products and graphical computing platform this software product; with the AI era of hot, Deep learning under the era, NVIDIA company in the previous three products (home game graphics card and enterprise computing graphics card two hardware products and graphical computing platform) on the basis of the establishment of the AI model library integrated AI software integration platform, and then with the AI platform in the AI platform in the United States, China and other countries in the supercomputing organizations. platform, and then with the AI platform in supervised learning and unsupervised learning on the integration of AI models after the beginning of the scale, NVIDIA began to focus on reinforcement learning and the concept of meta-universe, so there is NVIDIA's robotics simulation platform, which is what this paper will introduce.
NVIDIA's original robotics simulation platform is NVIDIA issac gym, this project has a total of four versions, preview 1, preview 2, preview 3, preview 4, it can be said that this issac gym is NVIDIA in the direction of the robotics simulation of the great ancestor, the following is given in which the first The following is the first, second and fourth version of the download resources:
/devilmaycry812839668/issac_gym_store
Because it is the first generation of products, so this Isaac gym platform can only import 3D models (urdf, mjdf files), but can not provide 3D design operation platform, and the simulation platform and RL algorithms and other AI algorithms integrated together, with the development of time, this product is gradually maturing, so in the preview 4 version of the AI algorithms interface and algorithm libraries alone to take the out to form the IsaacGymEnvs project:
/NVIDIA-Omniverse/IsaacGymEnvs
Since NVIDIA believes that the AI platform for robotics is an important way to move towards general artificial intelligence (AGI) in the future, it has continued to ramp up its investment in this area, and so there were multiple departments simultaneously expanding and developing on the basis of issac gym, and so after the issac gym project was extracted from the issac gym envs project it was then upgraded to the OmniIsaacGymEnvs project, which was the first time that the OmniIsaacGymEnvs project was upgraded. project and the issac gym envs project were upgraded to the OmniIsaacGymEnvs project, at which point the focus was on enhancing the 3D design interface in preparation, i.e., adding the meta-universe concept, Omniverse:
/NVIDIA-Omniverse/OmniIsaacGymEnvs
In fact, the difference between the meta-universe concept here and the previous issac gym project and issac gym envs project is that its internal C++ implementation interface has been upgraded, so that the 3D design operation interface can be added in the next upgraded version, which makes it possible to carry out 3D design in a project and thus generate urdf and mjdf files without the need for importing them from third-party simulation and design platforms. design platform imported, so although it is said that OmniIsaacGymEnvs is issac gym and issac gym envs upgrades, but for the user in fact does not have too substantial changes, because this upgrade is mainly to serve its internal developers.
At the same time that nvidia upgraded issac gym and issac gym envs to OmniIsaacGymEnvs, they also performed a fork operation, i.e., they opened a separate branch from issac gym and issac gym envs, which also served the concept of meta-universes, where the new branch considers the processing of In this new branch, more input data types were considered to be processed and more interfaces to AI models were added, thus the orbit project:
/NVIDIA-Omniverse/orbit
Because NVIDIA's investment in robotics projects is a development path that starts at one point, then branches out from one line to develop multiple lines independently, and then merges the multiple lines together, OmniIsaacGymEnvs and orbit can both be considered to be the basis of the issac gym project combined with the different meta-universes that need to develop the later interfaces after the fork to develop them independently. development, after the issac gym project forked into the OmniIsaacGymEnvs and orbit projects, NVIDIA again decided to merge these projects into one project, which is the issac sim project, address:
/isaac/sim
It can be said that issac sim is a stage-by-stage summary of NVIDIA's meta-universe technology platform. While NVIDIA upgraded the issac gym project to IsaacGymEnvs and then to OmniIsaacGymEnvs and orbit, NVIDIA also in the most primitive version of issac gym At the same time, NVIDIA also opened other routes of projects, such as Isaac ROS and Isaac Manipulator, in which Isaac ROS can be regarded as the integration of issac gym and ROS software platforms, while Isaac Manipulator can be regarded as the integration of issac gym and visual recognition systems and motion planning systems, so issac gym developed into today's NVIDIA's issac family as follows:
1、Isaac ROS：
/isaac/ros
Experience Reference Guide Standard:
/bss/NVIDIA/
2、Isaac Manipulator：
/isaac/manipulator
Experience Reference Guide Standard:
/bss/NVIDIA/
3、NVIDIA Isaac Sim：
/isaac/sim
Experience Reference Guide Criteria.
/bss/NVIDIA/
issac sim can be viewed as an upgrade to issac gymenvs with the addition of a graphical interface designed in 3D to support other functional interfaces.
After NVIDIA launched the NVIDIA issac family and then upgraded, launched a new product, that is issac Lab; issac Lab in issac sim basis, so from the issac family again upgraded to the issac Lab family, which issac Lab family can be regarded as in the basis of issac family Add the input data type expansion of an upgrade, so in the windows platform issac sim platform represents the issac lab platform, the two are synonymous, but in the Linux platform, the two have different download address:
Isaac lab's homepage address:
/isaac/lab?ncid=ref-inor-146211
Isaac sim's homepage address:
/isaac/sim/
It can be said that issac lab is the product after adding some features on the basis of issac sim, which can be regarded as an upgrade, so now NVIDIA's maintenance projects are issac sim and issac lab projects, while the previous issac gym/issac gym envs/OmniIsaacGymEnvs/orbit projects are no longer maintained.
Because I am concerned about NVIDIA's products from issac gym project, because I am engaged in the direction of RL, so I found out that NVIDIA is not the right upgrade on the same product, and it is a multi-department engaged in messing up, so it forked out more than one project, and then the project is developed to a certain time merge together, and then redevelopment encounters a problem, and then again fork out of the branch, so there is today's this to feel the feeling of chaos, if it is a newcomer to learn robotics in the direction of AI, then the previous version can not pay too much attention to, directly from the issac sim and issac lab can start.
Expansion:
issac-gym download address:
/isaac-gym/download
Isaac Sim home page address:
/isaac/sim#isaac-lab
docker installation method address:
/orgs/nvidia/containers/isaac-sim
Personal github blog address:
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