Objective

To validate the Isaac Lab installation and observe the performance of a pre-trained, built-in policy. This chapter establishes a performance baseline and familiarizes the user with the end-to-end workflow, from training initiation to policy evaluation, without writing a single line of code.

1.1. Introduction to the Isaac Lab Ecosystem

Welcome to Isaac Lab, NVIDIA's cutting-edge robotics simulation and learning framework. Built upon the NVIDIA Omniverse™ platform, Isaac Lab provides a photorealistic and physically-accurate environment designed to bridge the gap between simulation and the real world (Sim2Real).

Before we execute our first script, it is crucial to understand the hierarchical structure of any simulation within Isaac Lab, which can be analogized to a film studio:

• Application (The Studio): The entire Isaac Sim window. It manages all resources.
• Simulation (The Director): Controls the "rules" of the world, such as gravity and the progression of time (physics steps).
• World (The Sound Stage): The global 3D coordinate system where everything exists.
• Stage (The Film Set): The organization of all assets (robots, objects, lights) within the World, structured as a hierarchy or tree.
• Scene (The Actors & Props): A specific collection of assets on the Stage that represents one instance of our training environment. For RL, we create thousands of clones of this Scene to generate data in parallel.

This structure allows for the creation of complex, large-scale, and highly parallelized experiments.

1.2. Installation and Verification

If you have not yet installed Isaac Lab, please follow the official documentation precisely. A correct installation is fundamental to a smooth development experience.

>> Official Isaac Lab Installation Guide

The primary installation steps involve:

1. Installing the correct NVIDIA drivers.
2. Installing the Omniverse Launcher.
3. Installing the Isaac Sim application via the Launcher.
4. Cloning the Isaac Lab repository and running the setup script (./isaaclab.sh --install).

1.3. Methodology: The 5-Minute Quickstart