Magnetic Force Between Robot Wheel and Surface

Isaac Sim Version

5.1.0

Operating System

Ubuntu 24.04

GPU Information

  • Model: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080
  • Driver Version: 580.105.08
  • CUDA Version: 13.0

Detailed Description

I am currently developing a four wheeled mobile robot where each wheel is made of a ferrous magnetic material that has an adhesion force of 200 N.

The robot is being designed so that it can magnetically attach to horizontal and vertical surfaces such as walls, beams, floors and ceilings.

Is there a method to add magnetic force to the wheel links of the movable robot and a magnetic field to the various environmental surfaces?

Hi, In Isaac Sim you can model this using custom forces between the wheel links and nearby “magnetic” surfaces, typically implemented either as scripted force fields or via a custom physics plugin rather than true electromagnetic simulation.
Isaac Sim’s native physics (PhysX) does not provide a general-purpose magnetic field model between arbitrary rigid bodies out of the box. For a wall‑climbing robot, the usual approach is to treat magnetism as an additional attractive force between wheel links and nearby surfaces, not as a new contact type.

Conceptually, you want for each wheel link:

  • Detect which surface it is close to (floor, wall, beam, ceiling).
  • Compute a “magnetic” force vector pointing from the wheel toward the surface, with a magnitude up to your adhesion force (e.g., 200 N at contact).
  • Apply that force at the wheel link in the physics step.