Isaac cuMotion Accelerated Planning#

Overview#

NVIDIA Isaac cuMotion provides GPU-accelerated trajectory planning as an alternative to the default MoveIt2 OMPL planners. It leverages CUDA parallel processing to achieve significantly faster planning times, especially for collision-constrained environments. cuMotion integrates as a drop-in MoveIt2 planning pipeline replacement – no changes to the WMX ROS2 nodes are required.

Prerequisites#

NVIDIA GPU with CUDA support (RTX 5070 or better recommended)
Ubuntu 22.04 with NVIDIA drivers installed
ROS2 Humble
Isaac ROS packages installed in a Docker container (see movensys_isaac_manipulator/doc/2_docker.md for setup)
movensys_manipulator_isaac_config workspace built inside the container
WMX ROS2 application built on the IPC (see Getting Started)

Integration#

cuMotion sends planned trajectories to the same /movensys_manipulator_arm_controller/follow_joint_trajectory action server that MoveIt2 uses. The follow_joint_trajectory_server node executes them identically – no WMX node changes are needed.

The Orin platform config (orin_manipulator_config_cr3a.yaml) enables the isaacsim_joint_topic parameter so joint states are forwarded to Isaac Sim. See wmx_ros2_package for configuration details and ROS2 Actions for action server details.

Key Differences from Stage 1 (MoveIt2 OMPL)#
Aspect	cuMotion (Stage 2)
Planning pipeline	cuMotion replaces OMPL as the MoveIt2 planner backend
Robot description	XRDF (Extended Robot Description Format) loaded for GPU optimization
Execution environment	Planner runs inside the Isaac ROS Docker container with GPU access
Hardware interface	Same `FollowJointTrajectory` action – no WMX changes needed
Planning speed	Typically faster due to GPU parallelism

Stage 2a – Simulation#

Run cuMotion with Isaac Sim on the same machine (no physical robot).

Step 1: Open Isaac Sim

Open the simulation scene:

~/robotics_isaac_sim/isaac_manipulator/simulation_1_to_3.usd

Step 2: Launch the Simulation Bridge

ros2 run movensys_manipulator_isaac_config simulation_action \
  --ros-args -p use_sim_time:=true

Step 3: Launch cuMotion Planner (Docker)

docker exec -u admin -it movensys_isaac_manipulator_container \
  bash -lc 'source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash && \
            source /home/admin/ws/install/setup.bash && \
            ros2 launch movensys_manipulator_isaac_config \
              isaac_cumotion.launch.py use_sim_time:=true'

Step 4: Execute Trajectory Test

ros2 launch movensys_manipulator_isaac_config \
  stage1and2_trajectory.launch.py use_sim_time:=true

Stage 2b – Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL)#

Run cuMotion planning in Isaac Sim while executing on the physical robot (IPC).

Step 1: Open Isaac Sim [Desktop]

Open the HiL scene:

~/robotics_isaac_sim/isaac_manipulator/hil_1_to_3.usd

Step 2: Launch WMX ROS2 Manipulator [IPC]

sudo --preserve-env=PATH,AMENT_PREFIX_PATH,COLCON_PREFIX_PATH,PYTHONPATH,\
LD_LIBRARY_PATH,ROS_DISTRO,ROS_VERSION,ROS_PYTHON_VERSION,ROS_DOMAIN_ID,\
RMW_IMPLEMENTATION \
  bash -c "source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash && \
           source ~/wmx_ros2_ws/install/setup.bash && \
           ros2 launch wmx_ros2_package \
             wmx_ros2_cr3a_manipulator.launch.py"

Step 3: Launch cuMotion [IPC]

docker exec -u admin -it movensys_isaac_manipulator_container \
  bash -lc 'source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash && \
            source /home/admin/ws/install/setup.bash && \
            ros2 launch movensys_manipulator_isaac_config \
              isaac_cumotion.launch.py'

Step 4: Launch Trajectory [IPC]

ros2 launch movensys_manipulator_isaac_config stage1and2_trajectory.launch.py

Stage 2c – Real Robot (No Simulation)#

Run cuMotion planning and execute on the physical robot with no Isaac Sim digital twin. Uses the same launch sequence as HiL but with a different USD scene.