RoboLab is a research project developed and maintained by the Seattle Robotics Lab (SRL) at NVIDIA Research, with contributions from across NVIDIA.
NVIDIA contributors: Xuning Yang, Rishit Dagli, Jonathan Tremblay, Yu-Wei Chao, Alperen Degirmenci, Liang Hao, Fabio Ramos, Alex Zook, Siyi Chen, Renato Gasoto, Xiaotong Chen, Valts Blukis, Shun Zhang.
We thank the following additional contributors for their help in building RoboLab: Arhan Jain, Karl Pertsch.
If you encounter issues or have suggestions, please open an Issue in this repository.
We welcome:
- New assets — objects, scenes, tasks, robots, and variations, following the per-type instructions below.
- Bug fixes — with a description of the problem and how to reproduce it.
- Documentation — fixes and improvements.
New policy backends (a client + runner under policies/<name>/) must be backed by a published paper or public project, and require reaching out to the maintainers before submitting a PR — open an Issue with the paper or project reference and we will follow up.
Please open an Issue to discuss before starting work on:
- Changes to the core framework (
robolab/core/). - Changes to existing robots, tasks, or scenes that would alter benchmark results.
- Dependency or simulator-stack changes.
We cannot accept: commits without DCO sign-off, assets without a license, or new Python files without the standard SPDX header (Apache-2.0 — copy it from any existing file).
- Fork the repository and create your branch from main.
- Make your changes and ensure tests pass.
- Describe in detail what your feature does, or if it fixes issues.
- Rebase to the latest main.
- Sign off all your commits (see DCO section below).
- Submit a pull request.
We welcome new asset contributions via PRs. For each asset type, you must make sure that they follow these instructions:
- Objects — see
docs/objects.md- Self-contained
.usd/.usdafiles with physics, placed underassets/objects/<your_dataset_name>/. - Appropriate license is placed in each folder, and added to
THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.
- Self-contained
- Scenes — see
docs/scene.md- USD layouts of objects + fixtures (no robots/lighting/backgrounds).
- All object references must be relative (no global paths) and self-contained within your PR.
- Scenes must be settled and accompanied by appropriate updates to scene metadata,
_images, etc.
- Tasks — see
docs/task_libraries.md- Self-contained
.py, placed underrobolab/tasks/<your_benchmark_name>/.
- Self-contained
- Robots — see
docs/robots.md- A
@configclasswith arobotfield (ArticulationCfg), and any and all appropriate action/observation configs.
- A
- Variations (camera, lighting, background) — see
docs/camera.md,docs/lighting.md,docs/background.md
Note
Each object or task contribution must live in its own folder, and the folder name must reference your work (e.g. the dataset or task name). Objects must carry their own inherited license.
In your PR, please add any appropriate citations, contact information and affiliation for the assets. We will cite your work.
-
We require that all contributors "sign-off" on their commits. This certifies that the contribution is your original work, or you have rights to submit it under the same license, or a compatible license.
- Any contribution which contains commits that are not Signed-Off will not be accepted.
-
To sign off on a commit you simply use the
--signoff(or-s) option when committing your changes:$ git commit -s -m "Add cool feature."This will append the following to your commit message:
Signed-off-by: Your Name <your@email.com>You can also configure commit signing as default for this repo with:
git config commit.gpgsign true -
Full text of the DCO (https://developercertificate.org/):
Developer Certificate of Origin Version 1.1 Copyright (C) 2004, 2006 The Linux Foundation and its contributors. Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.1 By making a contribution to this project, I certify that: (a) The contribution was created in whole or in part by me and I have the right to submit it under the open source license indicated in the file; or (b) The contribution is based upon previous work that, to the best of my knowledge, is covered under an appropriate open source license and I have the right under that license to submit that work with modifications, whether created in whole or in part by me, under the same open source license (unless I am permitted to submit under a different license), as indicated in the file; or (c) The contribution was provided directly to me by some other person who certified (a), (b) or (c) and I have not modified it. (d) I understand and agree that this project and the contribution are public and that a record of the contribution (including all personal information I submit with it, including my sign-off) is maintained indefinitely and may be redistributed consistent with this project or the open source license(s) involved.