Nvidia shows GR00T 2, Isaac Lab 3.0 and an open robot benchmark at CoRL 2026
In brief
- Nvidia presented three robotics releases at CoRL 2026, according to Crypto Briefing.
- GR00T 2 is the next generation of Nvidia's robot foundation models.
- Isaac Lab 3.0 became generally available in late October and moved to a modular architecture.
- A new open benchmark evaluates robot policies in simulation, alongside Isaac Lab-Arena.
- CoRL 2026 runs November 9 to 12 in Austin, Texas.
What's in the releases
GR00T 2 is described as the next generation of Nvidia's foundation models for robots. Earlier versions in the line (GR00T N1.6 and N1.7) used a 3B-parameter open vision-language-action model running on a Cosmos backend.
Isaac Lab 3.0 is the piece with the most detail.
It became generally available in late October, a couple of weeks ahead of the conference, and it's now built on a modular architecture. Developers can plug in different physics engines (including Newton and PhysX), and the framework supports scalable training across multiple GPUs. It also ships with deployment tooling such as LEAPP, which is aimed at making it easier to move a trained policy from simulation onto real hardware. The framework refines those policies through reinforcement learning and imitation learning.
The benchmark and the keynote
The third release is a new open benchmark for evaluating robot policies in simulation. It arrives alongside Isaac Lab-Arena, which Nvidia also presented at CoRL 2026.
Jim Fan, co-lead of Project GR00T, is scheduled to give a keynote on November 9 at 1:50 p.m. CST. Its title is "From Dreaming to Doing: World Action Models and Agentic Robotics."
Nvidia's 'ChatGPT moment' pitch
Nvidia has framed this period as a turning point for physical AI, suggesting robotics is approaching its own "ChatGPT moment." The company's chief executive has pushed the same message.
CEO Jensen Huang has said that general-purpose humanoid robotics is advancing at “extraordinary speed.”
Crypto Briefing didn't say when or where Huang made that remark.
Partners including Agile Robots and Unitree are positioned to build on these releases, according to the report, and Nvidia pairs its software with hardware such as Jetson Thor. So where does Isaac Lab fit? Crypto Briefing said synthetic data generation and better training pipelines for vision-language-action models have become a growing focus across the industry, and it called Isaac Lab Nvidia's bet on owning that layer.
Frequently asked questions
What's new in Nvidia's Isaac Lab 3.0?
Isaac Lab 3.0 uses a modular architecture that lets developers plug in different physics engines, including Newton and PhysX. It supports scalable training across multiple GPUs and includes deployment tooling such as LEAPP, aimed at moving trained policies from simulation onto real hardware. It became generally available in late October 2026, according to Crypto Briefing.
What is GR00T 2?
GR00T 2 is described as the next generation of Nvidia's foundation models for robots. Earlier versions in the line, GR00T N1.6 and N1.7, used a 3B-parameter open vision-language-action model running on a Cosmos backend. Nvidia presented GR00T 2 at the 2026 Conference on Robot Learning.
