GR00T N1 (Isaac GR00T)

Architecture

Dual-system VLA. System 2: VLM (NVIDIA-Eagle + SmolLM-1.7B) at roughly 10 Hz. System 1: diffusion transformer producing real-time motor actions. Jointly trained end-to-end on real-robot trajectories, human videos, and synthetic data. Runs on Jetson AGX Thor at the edge.

Key facts

Cross-embodiment

Single-arm to bimanual humanoid; broad developer community via NVIDIA Isaac. Dual-system VLA (System 2 VLM + System 1 diffusion transformer).

Model lineage (current)

N1 (Mar 2025 GTC) -> N1.5 (Jun 2025; frozen Eagle-2.5 VLM, FLARE loss, DreamGen data) -> N1.6 (Dec 2025; internal Cosmos-2B reasoning VLM, 2x DiT, state-relative action chunks) -> N1.7 (current, Early Access in the Isaac-GR00T repo). There is NO 'GR00T N2'; do not create one.

License evolution (load-bearing)

The franchise moved from NONCOMMERCIAL to commercial-open. Original GR00T-N1-2B weights shipped under the NVIDIA OneWay Noncommercial License (open weights but noncommercial). N1.7 flipped to fully commercial: code Apache-2.0, weights NVIDIA Open Model License, 'fully commercially licensable.' isOpen=true holds (downloadable weights) but the N1-specific noncommercial qualifier matters. Verify N1.5/N1.6 model-card licenses directly before asserting commercial use of those two versions.

Partner-verification matrix (verified-vs-claimed)

PARTNER-CONFIRMED (all research/development tier, NOT production): Boston Dynamics Atlas ('early adopter, in development', BD's own release), Unitree (co-announced the GR00T Reference Robot + G1 benchmark platform), Sharpa (reference-robot hands). NVIDIA-ASSERTED demos only: Fourier GR-1, 1X NEO, Agility Digit, Franka/Techman ('evaluating'). AGGREGATOR-INFLATED - do NOT log as GR00T deployments: Apptronik Apollo (primary brain is Google DeepMind Gemini; GR00T is secondary integration), Figure (competitor; runs its own Helix on own hardware), Sanctuary/XPENG (2024 logo-slide only). General rule: an NVIDIA ecosystem-partner logo is a platform relationship at most, never a production GR00T deployment. No verified PRODUCTION GR00T deployment exists on any platform.

Broader physical-AI stack

Three-computer stack: Isaac Sim / Isaac Lab (train), Cosmos world-foundation-models (Cosmos Reason / Predict / Transfer; synthetic data), Jetson AGX Thor + GR00T (runtime). Newton physics engine = NVIDIA + Google DeepMind + Disney Research, open-source on Warp + OpenUSD, shipping in Isaac Lab (beta Sept 2025).

Reference robot (GTC Taipei, late May/Jun 1 2026)

NVIDIA Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot: Unitree H2 Plus chassis (~6 ft, 150 lb, 31 DoF) + Sharpa Wave tactile hands + Jetson AGX Thor. A reference design for academic research (Ai2, ETH Zurich, Stanford, UC San Diego), available from Unitree late 2026 - research-tier, not a competing commercial robot.

Powered-models flagged (not in registry yet)

NEURA 4NE-1, MiPA (NEURA Cognitive Stack builds atop GR00T); broader cross-embodiment targets. Preserved from prior wiring; not re-verified this pass.

Released / hosted

GTC announcement March 18, 2025 (arXiv 2503.14734); N1.6-3B on Hugging Face; GR00T N1.5 integrated into HF LeRobot.

Developed by (1)

• NVIDIA

Powers (2)

• AEONHexagon · humanoid
• DigitAgility Robotics · humanoid

Hosted by (1)

• LeRobot(Framework)

Derivative brains (1)

• Neuraverse Cognitive Stack(OS-layer)

Common questions

What is GR00T N1 (Isaac GR00T)?

NVIDIA's open humanoid foundation model and the first of its kind to be released openly. A dual-system VLA: System 2 uses NVIDIA-Eagle plus SmolLM-1.7B as the VLM at roughly 10 Hz; System 1 is a diffusion transformer producing real-time motor actions. Jointly trained end-to-end on real-robot trajectories, human videos, and synthetic data. Part of the broader Isaac GR00T platform that includes Isaac Lab, Omniverse, and Cosmos.

Which robots run on GR00T N1 (Isaac GR00T)?

2 robot models on the DEPLOY registry run on GR00T N1 (Isaac GR00T): AEON, Digit.

Who developed GR00T N1 (Isaac GR00T)?

GR00T N1 (Isaac GR00T) is credited to NVIDIA on the DEPLOY registry. Each developer attribution is verified via primary sources.

Is GR00T N1 (Isaac GR00T) open source?

Yes. GR00T N1 (Isaac GR00T) is recorded as open-source / open-weights on the DEPLOY registry, meaning model weights or source code are publicly available.

What type of AI is GR00T N1 (Isaac GR00T)?

GR00T N1 (Isaac GR00T) is a foundation model, built on a Dual-system VLA. System 2: VLM (NVIDIA-Eagle + SmolLM-1.7B) at roughly 10 Hz. System 1: diffusion transformer producing real-time motor actions. Jointly trained end-to-end on real-robot trajectories, human videos, and synthetic data. Runs on Jetson AGX Thor at the edge. architecture on the DEPLOY registry.

Sources (10)

1. NVIDIA Newsroom: GR00T N1 announcement (primary) · https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/ ↗
2. NVIDIA Investor Relations · https://investor.nvidia.com/ ↗
3. arXiv 2503.14734: GR00T N1 paper · https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.14734 ↗
4. https://research.nvidia.com/labs/gear/gr00t-n1_5/ ↗
5. https://research.nvidia.com/labs/gear/gr00t-n1_6/ ↗
6. https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-accelerates-robotics-research-and-development-with-new-open-models-and-simulation-libraries ↗
7. https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-open-humanoid-robot-reference-design ↗
8. https://github.com/NVIDIA/Isaac-GR00T ↗
9. https://huggingface.co/nvidia/GR00T-N1-2B ↗
10. https://bostondynamics.com/news/boston-dynamics-expands-collaboration-with-nvidia/ ↗

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