The company will pre-train Isaac GR00T N1 and offer to robotics developers worldwide. NVIDIA
In a groundbreaking series of announcements at its GTC conference, NVIDIA on Tuesday unveiled a portfolio of AI-driven technologies, including Isaac GR00T N1— the world’s first open, fully customizable foundation model for humanoid reasoning and skills.
The launch also included the Isaac GR00T Blueprint for synthetic data generation and Newton, a physics engine developed with Google DeepMind and Disney Research.
The tech giant also introduced Cosmos World Foundation Models (WFMs), offering developers unprecedented control over AI-driven world generation and reasoning.
The announcements mark a significant step in NVIDIA’s mission to bridge the gap between AI and the physical world, opening up new possibilities across multiple industries.
GR00T N1: The next frontier in the age of AI
One of the most anticipated reveals, NVIDIA Isaac GR00T N1, is the first in a series of fully customizable models that NVIDIA will pre-train and offer to robotics developers worldwide—helping industries tackle global labor shortages, which exceed 50 million workers.
The model features a dual-system architecture inspired by human cognition. System 1 operates as a rapid-response mechanism, executing instinctive actions, while System 2 takes a deliberate, analytical approach to decision-making. Using a vision-language model, System 2 interprets its environment and instructions before System 1 translates those insights into precise movements.
This synergy enables the robot to generalize across common tasks, such as grasping, manipulating, and seamlessly transferring objects between its arms with remarkable accuracy, the company said in a release.
During his GTC keynote, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang demonstrated 1X’s humanoid robot autonomously performing domestic tidying tasks using a post-trained policy built on GR00T N1.
.“The age of generalist robotics is here,” he said.
“With NVIDIA Isaac GR00T N1 and new data-generation and robot-learning frameworks, robotics developers everywhere will open the next frontier in the age of AI.”
Companies like 1X Technologies, Agility Robotics, Boston Dynamics, Mentee Robotics, and NEURA Robotics have already gained early access to GR00T N1.
During the event, the chipmaker also announced a collaboration with Google DeepMind and Disney Research to develop Newton, an open-source physics engine tailored for robotics.
Built on the NVIDIA Warp framework, Newton will be optimized for robot learning and compatible with simulation frameworks such as Google DeepMind’s MuJoCo and NVIDIA Isaac™ Lab. Additionally, the three companies plan to enable Newton to use Disney’s physics engine.
Disney Research, in particular, will use Newton to enhance its robotic character platform, which powers expressive entertainment robots such as Star Wars-inspired BDX droids.
“This collaboration will allow us to create a new generation of robotic characters that are more expressive and engaging than ever before,” said Kyle Laughlin, SVP of Walt Disney Imagineering R&D.
Cosmos World Foundation Models
NVIDIA’s Cosmos World Foundation Model – NVIDIA
NVIDIA’s Cosmos World Foundation Models (WFMs) offer developers unprecedented control over AI-driven world generation and reasoning.
A major breakthrough for robotics and autonomous vehicles, cosmos introduces an open, customizable reasoning model, allowing AI to predict real-world interactions.
In addition to these, NVIDIA is also launching two new blueprints — powered by the NVIDIA Omniverse™ and Cosmos platforms — that provide developers with massive, controllable synthetic data generation engines for post-training robots and autonomous vehicles.
NVIDIA’s Cosmos Transfer WFMs help AI models learn better by turning structured video inputs, like segmentation maps and LiDAR scans, into realistic synthetic data. This makes AI training faster and more accurate.
Cosmos Predict takes AI-driven world generation further by predicting motion and actions from images, text, and video. This helps robots and self-driving cars make better decisions.
AI-driven healthcare
The tech giant also announced its partnership with GE HealthCare to drive innovation in autonomous medical imaging.
The Chicago-based health technology company will use the new NVIDIA Isaac for Healthcare medical device simulation platform, which includes pre-trained models and physics-based simulations of sensors, anatomy, and environments.
“The healthcare industry is one of the most important applications of AI, as the demand for healthcare services far exceeds the supply,” said Kimberly Powell, VP of Healthcare at NVIDIA. “With Isaac for Healthcare, we’re enabling lifesaving medical devices to act autonomously and expand access to healthcare globally.”
The technology comes at a time when nearly two-thirds of the global population lacks access to basic diagnostic imaging. By integrating robotics and AI into healthcare, NVIDIA and GE HealthCare aim to democratize medical imaging, addressing staffing shortages and improving patient outcomes.
Isaac for Healthcare is built on NVIDIA’s three core AI platforms—DGX, Omniverse, and Holoscan—offering advanced simulation environments for robotic-assisted surgeries, endoscopy, and cardiovascular interventions. Early adopters such as Moon Surgical, Neptune Medical, and Xcath are already exploring its capabilities.
The AI chipmaker also announced NVIDIA DGX Spark personal AI supercomputer, which will provide developers a turnkey system to expand GR00T N1’s capabilities for new robots, tasks and environments without extensive custom programming.
NVIDIA GR00T N1 training data and task evaluation scenarios can now be downloaded from Hugging Face and GitHub.
The Isaac GR00T Blueprint for synthetic manipulation motion generation is also available as an interactive demo on build.nvidia.com or for download on GitHub.
Cosmos WFMs are now listed in the NVIDIA API catalog and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI Model Garden.
Cosmos Predict and Cosmos Transfer are openly accessible on Hugging Face and GitHub, while Cosmos Reason is available in early access. Isaac for Healthcare has also been released in early access.
Meanwhile, the Newton physics engine is expected to launch later this year.
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Neetika Walter With over a decade-long career in journalism, Neetika Walter has worked with The Economic Times, ANI, and Hindustan Times, covering politics, business, technology, and the clean energy sector. Passionate about contemporary culture, books, poetry, and storytelling, she brings depth and insight to her writing. When she isn’t chasing stories, she’s likely lost in a book or enjoying the company of her dogs.
