NVIDIA Isaac Sim. Total Immersion

NVIDIA Isaac Sim. Total Immersion is a beginner-friendly, industry-aligned program that takes you from zero to confident creator of high-fidelity robotic simulations. Isaac Sim is part of NVIDIA Omniverse and provides photorealistic rendering, PhysX 5 physics, and robust Python APIs for building, testing, and validating robot behaviors. This course is designed for newcomers to robotics and simulation, developers transitioning into robotics, students preparing for robotics careers, career changers entering AI and automation, and technical professionals who need to simulate, test, or manage robotic systems. No prior robotics or advanced programming background is required.

Across 30 sections and hands-on projects, you will install and configure the full Omniverse and Isaac Sim stack, understand the USD scene framework, create scenes and robots, configure physics and articulations, implement controllers, and simulate sensors. You will program robots via the Python API, build reinforcement learning (RL) and imitation learning pipelines with Isaac Lab, and integrate modern AI models such as Vision-Language Models (VLM), Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models, and Large Language Models (LLMs) for high-level planning. You will also connect simulations to the ROS 2 ecosystem for navigation, manipulation, and real-time control, and learn how to move trained policies from simulation to real robots through domain randomization, calibration, and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testing.

By progressing through interface fundamentals, physics setup, robot import (URDF/MJCF to USD), controllers (PID, position/velocity/effort, impedance), perception (RGB, depth, LiDAR, IMU), and task building, you will develop practical skills that map directly to professional robotics workflows. You will learn motion planning basics (IK, FK, RRT/PRM), data generation for computer vision, and the design of realistic environments for industrial, household, and outdoor scenarios. The course emphasizes performance optimization, reproducibility, and best engineering practices, including profiling, LOD, collision mesh optimization, GPU utilization, batching, and automated testing with CI/CD.

Specialized modules cover Isaac Lab for RL at scale (parallel environments, observation/action/reward managers, termination conditions), imitation learning (teleoperation, demonstration capture, behavioral cloning, DAgger), and cutting-edge AI integration: using VLMs for visual grounding and natural-language commands, VLAs (e.g., RT-2, OpenVLA, Octo) for end-to-end visuomotor policies, and LLMs for high-level task decomposition, function calling, and safe recovery strategies. You will explore Isaac GROOT generalist policies, multi-embodiment learning, and adaptation to new tasks and robots.

Throughout, you will create complete pipelines: set up robots, sense the world, plan and execute motions, train and evaluate policies, and integrate with ROS 2 (Topics, TF, RViz, Navigation2, MoveIt2). You will validate scenarios, measure performance, ensure safety, and prepare your work for deployment. Realistic capstone projects consolidate these skills: autonomous sorting, mobile delivery, collaborative assembly, humanoid locomotion, indoor drone navigation, and natural-language VLA control.

Upon completion, you will be able to: install and navigate Isaac Sim; build scenes in USD; configure physics, joints, and articulations; import and verify robot models; program robot behavior with the Python API; stream and process sensor data; implement RL/IL pipelines with Isaac Lab; integrate VLM/VLA/LLM components; connect to ROS 2 for navigation and manipulation; design realistic, high-performance environments; execute sim-to-real transfer; and present a portfolio-ready final project. You will be prepared for roles in robotics engineering, simulation development, autonomy testing, and AI-driven robotics research and productization.