Unitree G1
Bipedal humanoid robot by Unitree Robotics, designed as a compact research, development, and developer platform.
Applications
- Research
- Home Assistance
NVIDIA PhysX is a real-time physics engine originally developed by NovodeX (2001) and acquired by NVIDIA in 2008. Since PhysX 5 (2022), the engine is fully open-source under the BSD-3 license. It supports rigid-body simulation with constraints, soft bodies (FEM), cloth, fine-grained SDF for dexterity, and PBF (Position Based Fluids).
The PhysX 5 architecture is multi-threaded and GPU-accelerated (CUDA): the scene is partitioned into shared-memory buckets, with collisions, dynamics, and constraints executing in parallel. The GPU rigid-body solver achieves 10-100x higher FPS than PhysX 4 CPU, enabling RL training with thousands of environments in parallel (Isaac Gym/Isaac Lab).
PhysX is the native physics engine in NVIDIA Isaac Sim and NVIDIA Omniverse, and an optional engine in Unreal Engine 5. In robotics, it is used to simulate manipulators with constraints (Franka Panda, UR5), humanoids (Atlas, Digit, Optimus), and collision detection in MoveIt 2.
Simulation software is used for modelling, testing, and validating robot behaviours, sensor characteristics, environments, and algorithms without requiring physical hardware. It enables safe, repeatable, and cost-effective development cycles. Common robotics simulators include Gazebo, Isaac Sim (NVIDIA), MuJoCo, PyBullet, and Webots, each offering different trade-offs between physics accuracy, rendering fidelity, and integration with middleware frameworks such as ROS 2.
An API Library is a software package that exposes programmatic interfaces for communicating with a device, service, or system. In robotics it typically forms a lightweight integration layer built on top of the manufacturer's official API or an open-source project, abstracting low-level protocol details and providing language-native bindings (Python, C++, Java, etc.).
A Runtime is the environment or execution layer used to run code, load libraries, manage dependencies, and operate applications or services — either in real time or during normal system operation. In robotics this includes real-time operating system (RTOS) runtimes, ROS 2 executor runtimes, containerised execution environments (Docker, podman), and embedded C++ runtimes on microcontrollers.
NVIDIA Isaac Sim, NVIDIA Omniverse, Unreal Engine 4/5 (legacy), MoveIt 2 (collision detection), Isaac Gym/Lab (RL training of thousands of envs), Disney robotics simulations.
3.6k★ on GitHub (NVIDIA-Omniverse/PhysX), 800+ academic contributors, used in 1,000+ robotics RL publications.
Bipedal humanoid robot by Unitree Robotics, designed as a compact research, development, and developer platform.
Unitree H1 is a full-size general-purpose humanoid robot (~180 cm, ~47 kg). Bipedal, 5 DOF per leg + 4 DOF per arm, 3.3 m/s walking speed, 360° perception via 3D LiDAR + depth camera, Unitree M107 PMSM joint motors with ~360 N·m peak knee torque. Standard compute: Intel Core i5/i7; optional NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX.
Figure 03 is the third-generation humanoid robot from Figure AI, designed for Helix, home environments, and scalable mass production.
General-purpose humanoid robot developed by Tesla since 2021 (Tesla Bot). About 173 cm tall, 57 kg, 20 kg payload. Generation 3 hands have 22 degrees of freedom. Controlled by an AI system derived from Tesla FSD.
PhysX SDK ~500 MB with samples and documentation. GPU acceleration requires CUDA 11.4+.
License family: Permissive
AVX-512 vectorization support, improved gripper contact.
SDF optimizations, better simulation determinism.
Full GPU solver, soft bodies, FEM, cloth.
Open-source under BSD-3, no GPU support.
First stable multi-threaded release.
