NVIDIA unveils Isaac Gr00t open humanoid robotics platform at Computex
The new open-source foundation aims to accelerate humanoid development workflows, with backing from major research institutions including Stanford and ETH Zurich.
NVIDIA announced the Isaac Gr00t reference design humanoid robot platform during its Computex keynote, positioning the system as an open foundation for researchers and developers. The platform is designed to accelerate humanoid development workflows by integrating a Unitree H2 Plus humanoid chassis, Sharpa five-fingered hands, and NVIDIA Jetson Thor onboard compute.
The nearly 6-foot tall chassis weighs 150 pounds and features 31 degrees of freedom across the body. It is paired with dual Sharpa Wave tactile five-fingered units that offer 22 degrees of freedom and can deliver arm torque of up to 120 Newton-meters. The system also includes multi-view sensing capabilities, such as head-mounted stereo cameras, wrist cameras, and inertia measurement.
Onboard processing is handled by the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor T5000, which utilises a Blackwell GPU and 128GB of unified memory. The computer supports a configurable power range of 40 to 130 watts. Power is supplied by a 15Ah battery providing just under 1 kWh of capacity, which the company estimates will offer approximately three hours of endurance.
The platform runs on NVIDIA’s Gr00t open software and models, building on the foundational Gr00t N1 model revealed in March. While the Unitree H2 Plus chassis is listed on the manufacturer’s website for $29,900, the source material notes that only renders of the H2 model have been shown publicly. The developer platform will also support the more affordable Unitree G1 humanoid robot.
Several institutions have confirmed they will use the reference design, including Ai2, ETH Zurich, Stanford Robotics Center, and UC San Diego. Steve Cousins, executive director of the Stanford Robotics Center, stated that robotics moves fastest when researchers can build on open platforms, share code, and test ideas on real machines. As is common with recent humanoid presentations, no physical robot was demonstrated live during the announcement.
