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OpenUSD & Robotics Simulation Guides

Practical guides to inspecting USD assets, physical properties and simulation environments for your robotics task.

FeaturedFundamentals

What Are SimReady Assets? A Robotics Inspection Guide

Understand SimReady profiles, USD package contents and the checks to make before using an asset for robotics simulation.

Updated October 1, 20262 min
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A Quality Checklist for Robotics Simulation Environments

Evaluate an environment through task requirements, package inspection, profile checks and repeatable runtime acceptance tests.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

Articulated Assets: Inspecting Joints, Limits and Motion

Evaluate articulated simulation assets by checking joint frames, limits, moving bodies, collisions and task-specific behavior.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

Building USD Simulation Scenes from Reusable Assets

Compose an environment from reusable USD packages, then check dependencies, placement, interactions and reproducibility.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

Choosing Kitchen Environments for Robot Manipulation

Evaluate kitchen scenes around reach, articulation, object placement and repeatable manipulation tasks.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

Collision Geometry for Robotics Simulation

Choose and inspect collision representations around the surfaces, openings and contacts your robotics task needs.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

Domain Randomization: Designing Useful Scene Variations

Plan controlled visual and physical variations, preserve task validity and evaluate results with held-out conditions.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

GLB to USD: What Conversion Does and Does Not Add

Plan a GLB-to-USD simulation workflow by separating format conversion from collision, physical properties, joints and validation.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

Hand-Authored vs AI-Generated Simulation Assets

Choose library assets or AI generation around your task, then inspect package contents, physical properties and validation evidence.

Updated October 1, 20263 min

Isaac Sim, MuJoCo or Gazebo? Define Your Evaluation

Compare robotics simulators using your task, integrations, assets and repeatable evaluation instead of unsupported performance rankings.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

Mass, Friction and Restitution in Simulation Assets

Inspect physical properties, distinguish measurements from assumptions and build repeatable contact tests for simulation assets.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

OpenUSD for Robotics: Scenes, Layers and Physics

Learn how USD stages, references, layers and physics schemas fit a robotics asset workflow, and what to inspect when exchanging packages.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

Profiling and Optimizing Isaac Sim Environments

Measure simulation bottlenecks, simplify the right scene components and preserve task behavior while optimizing Isaac Sim environments.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

Semantic Labels in Simulation: A Practical Review Checklist

Define a task-specific label taxonomy and verify how scene labels become annotations in your selected simulation pipeline.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

Simulation Ground Truth: Outputs and Quality Checks

Plan RGB, depth and label outputs for robotics data workflows, and distinguish scene annotations from real-world measurement evidence.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

USD, URDF and MJCF: Choosing a Simulation Format

Understand the roles of USD, URDF and MJCF, and plan conversion checks around your robotics toolchain.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

Using USD Assets in NVIDIA Isaac Sim

A practical import and inspection workflow for USD assets in Isaac Sim, covering dependencies, scale, physics and task acceptance.

Updated October 1, 20262 min

Visual and Physical Materials in USD Simulation

Understand the difference between PBR appearance and contact properties, then inspect material bindings and dependencies in a USD package.

Updated October 1, 20262 min