NVIDIA (CEO Jensen Huang), a leader in AI computing technology, has released a new robot operating system that provides open-source vehicle management tool capabilities for autonomous mobile robots.

NVIDIA announced on the 24th that it released Developer Preview (DP) 2, the latest Isaac Robotic Operating System (ROS) software release, at ROSCon 2022.

This release includes additional features for ROS 2 developers, as well as new cloud and edge-to-robot task management and monitoring software for autonomous mobile robot (AMR) fleets.

NVIDIA Isaac ROS consists of individual packages (GEM) and the entire pipeline (NITROS) for hardware acceleration performance.

In addition to performance improvements, the new release adds Mission Dispatch and Client, FreeSpace Segmentation, and H.264 video encoding and decoding capabilities.

Mission Dispatch and Client provide a standard open-source method for assigning and tracking tasks between a vehicle management system and a ROS 2 robot. Mission Dispatch and Client communicate using VDA5050, an open communication standard specifically designed for robot fleets. Messages are transmitted wirelessly via MQTT, a lightweight messaging protocol for Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

Isaac ROS continuously provides hardware acceleration performance to the ROS 2 developer community for AI recognition, image processing, and exploration.

Autonomous robots require advanced AI and computer vision capabilities. NVIDIA Isaac ROS is the result of efforts to enable the robotics industry to more easily adopt cutting-edge technology.

Detailed information on the latest performance figures for major Isaac ROS packages can be found in the Isaac ROS Performance Summary.