NVIDIA's Isaac GR00T robot gives researchers open humanoid AI platform
First open humanoid reference design combines Unitree body, Sharpa hands, and Jetson Thor compute
NVIDIA today unveiled the Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot, the first open humanoid robot reference design aimed at democratizing frontier robotics research. The platform integrates a Unitree H2 Plus humanoid chassis (nearly 6 feet tall, 150 pounds) with Sharpa Wave tactile five-fingered hands, providing 75 total degrees of freedom—22 in the hands alone. Onboard compute comes from a Jetson AGX Thor T5000, featuring a Blackwell GPU delivering 2,070 FP4 teraflops for real-time sensor processing and AI inference. The robot also includes multi-view cameras, torque sensing (120 Nm arm, 360 Nm leg), and a 0.972 kWh battery for about three hours of operation.
The Isaac GR00T software stack provides a full development environment covering data capture, simulation, training, evaluation, and deployment—all open and not locked into proprietary platforms. This unified approach addresses the fragmented workflows that have slowed humanoid research. Leading institutions including Ai2, ETH Zurich, Stanford Robotics Center, and UC San Diego’s Advanced Robotics and Controls Laboratory are already adopting the reference design. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang called humanoid robots a "multitrillion-dollar economic opportunity," and the GR00T reference design aims to give researchers a single, secure foundation to accelerate discoveries toward general-purpose physical intelligence.
- Open reference design combines Unitree H2 Plus humanoid, Sharpa five-fingered hands, and NVIDIA Jetson Thor compute
- 75 degrees of freedom with dexterous manipulation (22 DOF in hands) and onboard 2,070 FP4 TOPS AI GPU
- Full-stack Isaac GR00T platform unifies simulation, training, evaluation, and deployment for researchers
Why It Matters
Democratizes humanoid robotics research, enabling faster breakthroughs in general-purpose physical AI.