Unverified Commit 85d75185 authored by Mayank Mittal's avatar Mayank Mittal Committed by GitHub

Adapts FAQ section in docs with Isaac Sim open-sourcing (#3105)

# Description

Some of the information in FAQ is now outdated since Isaac Sim is
open-sourced. This MR removes that part but also adds more explaination
on the goals of Isaac Lab.

## Type of change

- This change requires a documentation update

## Checklist

- [x] I have run the [`pre-commit` checks](https://pre-commit.com/) with
`./isaaclab.sh --format`
- [x] I have made corresponding changes to the documentation
- [x] My changes generate no new warnings
- [ ] I have added tests that prove my fix is effective or that my
feature works
- [ ] I have updated the changelog and the corresponding version in the
extension's `config/extension.toml` file
- [x] I have added my name to the `CONTRIBUTORS.md` or my name already
exists there

---------
Signed-off-by: 's avatarMayank Mittal <12863862+Mayankm96@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: 's avatarCopilot <175728472+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: 's avatarooctipus <zhengyuz@nvidia.com>
parent 71608f94
......@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ Isaac lab is developed with specific robot assets that are now **Batteries-inclu
- **Humanoids**: Unitree H1, Unitree G1
- **Quadcopter**: Crazyflie
The platform is also designed so that you can add your own robots! please refer to the
The platform is also designed so that you can add your own robots! Please refer to the
:ref:`how-to` section for details.
For more information about the framework, please refer to the `paper <https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.04195>`_
......@@ -48,12 +48,13 @@ For more information about the framework, please refer to the `paper <https://ar
License
=======
The Isaac Lab framework is open-sourced under the BSD-3-Clause license.
Please refer to :ref:`license` for more details.
The Isaac Lab framework is open-sourced under the BSD-3-Clause license,
with certain parts under Apache-2.0 license. Please refer to :ref:`license` for more details.
Acknowledgement
===============
Isaac Lab development initiated from the `Orbit <https://isaac-orbit.github.io/>`_ framework. We would appreciate if you would cite it in academic publications as well:
Isaac Lab development initiated from the `Orbit <https://isaac-orbit.github.io/>`_ framework.
We would appreciate if you would cite it in academic publications as well:
.. code:: bibtex
......
......@@ -83,15 +83,46 @@ be the single robot learning framework for Isaac Sim. Previously released framew
and we encourage users to follow our migration guides to transition over to Isaac Lab.
Is Isaac Lab a simulator?
-------------------------
Often, when people think of simulators, they think of various commonly available engines, such as
`MuJoCo`_, `Bullet`_, and `Flex`_. These engines are powerful and have been used in a number of
research projects. However, they are not designed to be a general purpose simulator for robotics.
Rather they are primarily physics engines that are used to simulate the dynamics of rigid and
deformable bodies. They are shipped with some basic rendering capabilities to visualize the
simulation and provide parsing capabilities of different scene description formats.
Various recent works combine these physics engines with different rendering engines to provide
a more complete simulation environment. They include APIs that allow reading and writing to the
physics and rendering engines. In some cases, they support ROS and hardware-in-the-loop simulation
for more robotic-specific applications. An example of these include `AirSim`_, `DoorGym`_, `ManiSkill`_,
`ThreeDWorld`_ and lastly, `Isaac Sim`_.
At its core, Isaac Lab is **not** a robotics simulator, but a framework for building robot learning
applications on top of Isaac Sim. An equivalent example of such a framework is `RoboSuite`_, which
is built on top of `MuJoCo`_ and is specific to fixed-base robots. Other examples include
`MuJoCo Playground`_ and `Isaac Gym`_ which use `MJX`_ and `PhysX`_ respectively. They
include a number of pre-built tasks with separated out stand-alone implementations for individual
tasks. While this is a good starting point (and often convenient), a lot of code
repetition occurs across different task implementations, which can reduce code-reuse for larger
projects and teams.
The main goal of Isaac Lab is to provide a unified framework for robot learning that includes
a variety of tooling and features that are required for robot learning, while being easy to
use and extend. It includes design patterns that simplify many of the common requirements for
robotics research. These include simulating sensors at different frequencies, connecting to different
teleoperation interfaces for data collection, switching action spaces for policy learning,
using Hydra for configuration management, supporting different learning libraries and more.
Isaac Lab supports designing tasks using *manager-based (modularized)* and *direct (single-script
similar to Isaac Gym)* patterns, leaving it up to the user to choose the best approach for their
use-case. For each of these patterns, Isaac Lab includes a number of pre-built tasks that can be
used for benchmarking and research.
Why should I use Isaac Lab?
---------------------------
Since Isaac Sim remains closed-sourced, it is difficult for users to contribute to the simulator and build a
common framework for research. On its current path, we see the community using the simulator will simply
develop their own frameworks that will result in scattered efforts with a lot of duplication of work.
This has happened in the past with other simulators, and we believe that it is not the best way to move
forward as a community.
Isaac Lab provides an open-sourced platform for the community to drive progress with consolidated efforts
toward designing benchmarks and robot learning systems as a joint initiative. This allows us to reuse
existing components and algorithms, and to build on top of each other's work. Doing so not only saves
......@@ -113,3 +144,12 @@ to Isaac Lab, please reach out to us.
.. _OmniIsaacGymEnvs: https://github.com/isaac-sim/OmniIsaacGymEnvs
.. _Orbit: https://isaac-orbit.github.io/
.. _Isaac Automator: https://github.com/isaac-sim/IsaacAutomator
.. _AirSim: https://microsoft.github.io/AirSim/
.. _DoorGym: https://github.com/PSVL/DoorGym/
.. _ManiSkill: https://github.com/haosulab/ManiSkill
.. _ThreeDWorld: https://www.threedworld.org/
.. _RoboSuite: https://robosuite.ai/
.. _MuJoCo Playground: https://playground.mujoco.org/
.. _MJX: https://mujoco.readthedocs.io/en/stable/mjx.html
.. _Bullet: https://github.com/bulletphysics/bullet3
.. _Flex: https://developer.nvidia.com/flex
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