Isaac Lab is a GPU-accelerated, open-source framework designed to unify and simplify robotics research workflows, such as reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and motion planning. Built on NVIDIA Isaac Sim, it combines fast and accurate physics and sensor simulation, making it an ideal choice for sim-to-real transfer in robotics.
Isaac Lab provides developers with a range of essential features for accurate sensor simulation, such as RTX-based cameras, LIDAR, or contact sensors. The framework's GPU acceleration enables users to run complex simulations and computations faster, which is key for iterative processes like reinforcement learning and data-intensive tasks. Moreover, Isaac Lab can run locally or be distributed across the cloud, offering flexibility for large-scale deployments.
Isaac Lab offers a comprehensive set of tools and environments designed to facilitate robot learning:
- Robots: A diverse collection of robots, from manipulators, quadrupeds, to humanoids, with 16 commonly available models.
- Environments: Ready-to-train implementations of more than 30 environments, which can be trained with popular reinforcement learning frameworks such as RSL RL, SKRL, RL Games, or Stable Baselines. We also support multi-agent reinforcement learning.
- Physics: Rigid bodies, articulated systems, deformable objects
- Sensors: RGB/depth/segmentation cameras, camera annotations, IMU, contact sensors, ray casters.
- Operating System: Ubuntu 22.04 or Ubuntu 24.04
- Ubuntu 24.04 is recommended if you plan to work with LiDAR and drones, as the PX4 repository with LiDAR support requires Ubuntu 24.04
- ROS2 Distribution: Jazzy
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Install Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab
Follow the official binaries installation guide.
Note: You don't need to clone the IsaacLab repository separately since you already have this fork. Continue with the other instructions such as creating a virtual environment with uv and installing dependencies.
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Create the symbolic link to isaacsim
cd IsaacLab
# This assumes you installed isaacsim from pre-built binaries
ln -s ${HOME}/isaacsim _isaac_sim-
Create and Activate the virtual environment
./isaaclab.sh --uv # This will create a virtual environment with the name env_isaaclab source ./env_isaaclab/bin/activate
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Install Isaac Lab dependencies
From the root of the repository, run:
./isaaclab.sh --install # or "./isaaclab.sh -i"
Once installation is complete and the environment is activated, you can run the remote sensing drone script:
./isaaclab.sh -p scripts/tasks/remote_sensing_drone.pyThis command should be executed from the root of the repository.
In case you want to modify the Tree Group, ideally it has to be maintained as only one mesh (due to limitations of IsaacLab). So, this should be handled opening the TreeGroup in IsaacSim, opening isaacsim selector in /home/isaacsim (where isaacsim should have been installed according to the tutorial) with the following command:
./isaacsim.selector.shThen, we open the usd file of the TreeGroup (importing if the file type is different than usd) that is located in: source/isaaclab_assets/isaaclab_assets/props/TreeGroup_1.usd
Then, we can add a new tree, importing it or dragging it from the file explorer with the mouse into isaac sim. Then, after we select all the meshes we want to be a single mesh, we export everything as a .glb file (to export it as a single mesh). We then can import that opening isaacsim again and from the import menu we select "merge static meshes", that will allow us to have only one big mesh of the entire group. With the .glb mesh imported and converted into a single mesh, finally we export it to be a usd file into a file called for example "TreeGroup_3_2", where that would mean that it has 3 eucalyptus and 2 Pines.
The Isaac Lab framework is released under BSD-3 License. The isaaclab_mimic extension and its
corresponding standalone scripts are released under Apache 2.0. The license files of its
dependencies and assets are present in the docs/licenses directory.
Note that Isaac Lab requires Isaac Sim, which includes components under proprietary licensing terms. Please see the Isaac Sim license for information on Isaac Sim licensing.
Note that the isaaclab_mimic extension requires cuRobo, which has proprietary licensing terms that can be found in docs/licenses/dependencies/cuRobo-license.txt.
Isaac Lab development initiated from the Orbit framework. We would appreciate if you would cite it in academic publications as well:
@article{mittal2023orbit,
author={Mittal, Mayank and Yu, Calvin and Yu, Qinxi and Liu, Jingzhou and Rudin, Nikita and Hoeller, David and Yuan, Jia Lin and Singh, Ritvik and Guo, Yunrong and Mazhar, Hammad and Mandlekar, Ajay and Babich, Buck and State, Gavriel and Hutter, Marco and Garg, Animesh},
journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
title={Orbit: A Unified Simulation Framework for Interactive Robot Learning Environments},
year={2023},
volume={8},
number={6},
pages={3740-3747},
doi={10.1109/LRA.2023.3270034}
}