cuRobo and Isaac Manipulator

Omniverse Isaac Sim
1

According to this:

cuRobo is coming to Isaac Sim, which is great!

My questions are, how this will be wrapped? Will this be a MotionPolicyController like Lula RMPflow? Will we be able to easily choose between Lula or cuRobo? Everything in cuRobo will be available (constrained planning)?

Anything that can be shared on the directions that are being taken are very much appreciated!

Thanks!

2

I have similar questions as well, whether the cuMotion ROS2 wrapper also implemented Batched Collision-Free Inverse Kinematics and Model Predictive Control (MPC) with MPPI. Could you get an answer to this, please let me know.
Thank you!

3

Hi @falgun-kumar.sinha I never got answer on that, but I stopped working with cuRobo a while ago, so I don’t know how is it right now.

4

Hi @edsonbffilho and @falgun-kumar.sinha,

Great questions – and since a lot has shipped since this thread was opened, here is a summary of where cuRobo / cuMotion / Isaac Manipulator stand today.

cuRobo → cuMotion: What Happened

cuRobo (the open-source research library at curobo.org) served as the foundation, and its collision-free motion generation capabilities have been productized as NVIDIA cuMotion. cuMotion is now the recommended path for both Isaac Sim and ROS 2 workflows.

cuMotion in Isaac Sim 6.0

Isaac Sim 6.0 ships a first-class cuMotion integration via the isaacsim.robot_motion.cumotion extension (cuMotion 1.1.0). It provides:

  • RmpFlowController – reactive motion policies (real-time, collision-aware end-effector control, analogous to the old Lula RMPflow)
  • TrajectoryOptimizer – collision-free trajectory optimization to configuration-space or task-space goals (this is the core cuRobo planner)
  • GraphBasedMotionPlanner – sampling-based planning (RRT variants) with cuMotion’s GPU-accelerated collision checking
  • TrajectoryGenerator – time-optimal trajectory generation from waypoints
  • CumotionWorldInterface – unified obstacle management (cuboids, meshes, oriented bounding boxes) shared across all algorithms

These plug into Isaac Sim’s new experimental Motion Generation API (isaacsim.robot_motion.experimental.motion_generation), which provides a unified framework with BaseController, Trajectory, TrajectoryFollower, WorldInterface, and WorldBinding abstractions. The old Lula-based isaacsim.robot_motion.motion_generation extension is still available but the cuMotion path is the actively developed one.

Built-in robot configs ship for Franka and UR10, with support for custom URDF/XRDF robots.

cuMotion via ROS 2

For ROS 2 users, isaac_ros_cumotion provides:

  • A MoveIt 2 planner plugin for collision-free trajectory planning
  • Inverse kinematics exposed through ROS 2 services
  • Robot segmentation for depth-camera-based obstacle avoidance via nvblox

As of Isaac ROS 4.4.0 (April 2026), isaac_manipulator has been renamed to isaac_ros_manipulation and the planner backend uses cuMotion directly.

To Answer the Original Questions

Will this be a MotionPolicyController like Lula RMPflow? Will we be able to easily choose between Lula or cuRobo?

Yes – RmpFlowController in the cuMotion extension serves the same role as the old Lula RMPflow controller. Both extensions coexist in 6.0, so you can use either. The cuMotion integration follows a “minimal wrapping” philosophy, exposing cuMotion’s Python API directly rather than abstracting it away.

Everything in cuRobo will be available (constrained planning)?

The TrajectoryOptimizer supports task-space and configuration-space targets with collision avoidance. cuMotion’s native Python API is exposed directly, so features like constrained planning axes are accessible. Note: TrajectoryOptimizer is not available on Windows in 6.0.

Whether the cuMotion ROS2 wrapper also implemented Batched Collision-Free Inverse Kinematics and MPC with MPPI?

The ROS 2 wrapper (isaac_ros_cumotion) exposes IK through a ROS 2 service. For MPC/MPPI, the cuRobo research library (v0.7.x) provides this at the Python API level; the productized cuMotion integration focuses on planning and reactive control rather than MPC specifically.

Getting Started

  • Isaac Sim 6.0: Enable isaacsim.robot_motion.cumotion and isaacsim.robot_motion.cumotion.examples in the Extension Manager. The examples include interactive demos for RmpFlow, Graph Planner, Trajectory Generator, Trajectory Optimizer, and World Interface.
  • ROS 2: See isaac_ros_cumotion and the cuMotion integration docs.

Closing this thread as the original questions have been addressed by the 6.0 release. Feel free to open new threads for specific cuMotion questions.