


Editor’s observe: This submit is part of our Meet the Omnivore sequence, which options particular person creators and builders who use NVIDIA Omniverse to speed up their 3D workflows and create digital worlds.
Whereas nonetheless in grad college, Antonio Serrano-Muñoz has helped creator papers spanning planetary gravities, AI-powered prognosis of rheumatoid arthritis and robots that exactly monitor millimetric-sized walkers, like ants.
Now, the Ph.D. pupil in utilized robotics at Mondragon College in northern Spain, is utilizing robotics and AI in remanufacturing to sort out problems with local weather change and air pollution.
Briefly, Serrano-Muñoz is busy discovering distinctive methods to use know-how to complicated, real-world points — and, in his free time, he makes extensions for NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for real-time 3D design collaboration and world simulation.
Omniverse Extensions are core constructing blocks that allow anybody to create and lengthen the performance of Omniverse Apps to fulfill the precise wants of their workflows with just some traces of Python code.
Serrano-Muñoz has created six open-source Omniverse Extensions that may be accessed on GitHub, one in every of which boosts the capabilities of NVIDIA Isaac Sim, an Omniverse-powered utility framework for creating photorealistic, bodily correct digital environments through which to develop, prepare and simulate AI robots.
“Because the starting of my Ph.D. research, I made a decision to work with Isaac Sim to simulate robots,” Serrano-Muñoz mentioned. “It affords a strong, real-time simulation platform with an ultra-realistic physics engine and graphics — in addition to a clear, easy utility programming interface that makes it simple to work together with the entire system.”
Serrano-Muñoz has pursued robotics for so long as he can keep in mind. Rising up in Cuba, he all the time fiddled with electronics, and he fell deeper in love with know-how when he started coding in faculty.
“Robots can help people with strenuous, high-precision, repetitive and generally hazardous duties,” Serrano-Muñoz mentioned. “They’ve the potential to enhance our lives, and I hope my work advances robotics in a means that enables us to construct a greater current and obtain a greater future.”
He believes Omniverse is essential to his doctoral research in utilized robotics.
“Performing real-time, graphically real looking simulations of robotics environments wasn’t attainable earlier than Omniverse,” he mentioned. “The platform opens the door to a brand new period of revolutionary adjustments in robotics, simulation and real-time collaboration.”
Omniverse hyperlinks specialists of all types — engineers, designers, content material creators — for the event of simulation techniques, he added. Key for that is Universal Scene Description (USD), an open supply 3D scene description and extensible file framework serving because the frequent language for digital worlds.
“USD performs an necessary position within the means of authoring, composing and studying a hierarchically organized scene to create and manipulate its rendering parts and objects,” Serrano-Muñoz mentioned.
Utilizing NVIDIA Omniverse, the developer has created robot simulations for industrial use cases and a digital twin of Mondragon College’s laboratory for robotics prototyping.
And whereas engaged on such initiatives, Serrano-Muñoz needed to combine with Isaac Sim a device he was already accustomed to: Robotic Working System, or ROS, a set of software program libraries for constructing robotic functions. So, he created an Omniverse Extension to allow simply that.
The extension lets customers manipulate simulated robotic techniques within the Omniverse-powered Isaac Sim utility by way of ROS management interfaces. ROS MoveIt, a movement planning framework for robots, can be utilized at the side of Isaac Sim’s dynamic control extension and PhysX capabilities, which carry bodily accuracy to high-fidelity robotics simulations.
“It’s simple to develop code with out leaving the Omniverse Package,” Serrano-Muñoz mentioned. “Omniverse Extensions include a system-wide integration API, set up, activation and reload mechanisms to enhance the performance of Omniverse Apps.”
This specific extension for ROS, he added, boosts agile prototyping for robotics functions — which is additional accelerated by his NVIDIA RTX 3080 Laptop GPU — making his workflow sooner than ever.
Hear extra from Serrano-Muñoz about utilizing digital twins for industrial robotics by watching his NVIDIA GTC session on demand. And watch his Neighborhood Highlight on the Omniverse Twitch channel taking place Aug. 3 at 11 a.m. PT.
Creators and builders the world over can download NVIDIA Omniverse for free, and enterprise teams can use the platform for his or her 3D initiatives.
Builders like Serrano-Muñoz will be part of NVIDIA at SIGGRAPH, a worldwide laptop graphics convention working Aug. 8-11. Watch the Omniverse neighborhood livestream at SIGGRAPH on Tuesday, Aug. 9, at midday PT to learn the way Omniverse and different design and visualization applied sciences are driving breakthroughs in graphics and GPU-accelerated software.
Plus, anybody can undergo the inaugural #ExtendOmniverse developer contest via Friday, Aug. 19. Create an Omniverse Extension utilizing Omniverse Code for an opportunity to win an NVIDIA RTX GPU.
Take a look at art work from different “Omnivores” and submit initiatives within the gallery. Join your workflows to Omniverse with software program from Adobe, Autodesk, Epic Video games, Maxon, Reallusion and more.
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