Nvidia officially rolled out its open-source foundation model for artificial intelligence, Isaac GR00T N1 or Groot N1, to enable humanoid robots. The company unveiled it during its yearly GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2025 in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2025.
In his keynote, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced, "The age of generalist robotics is here." He emphasized how Groot N1, along with new data-generation and robot-learning frameworks, will promote humanoid robotics innovation. It is set to revolutionize AI-driven automation.
Nvidia's Groot N1 is a pre-trained AI foundation model that can be further post-trained by developers to meet particular robotic applications. The AI was trained on available datasets and synthetically created data, allowing for better learning and adaptability of robots in real-world environments.
As Nvidia explains, Groot N1 is designed with a dual-system architecture, mimicking human intelligence, to enable robots to think in two different manners:
Slow-thinking system: Facilitates perception and reasoning, helping robots to evaluate complex situations and make sound judgments.
Fast-thinking system: Quick real-time processing so robots can move objects and execute tasks effortlessly.
This technology is meant to improve robots' abilities to engage with their surroundings efficiently. Thus, becoming more effective in addressing real-world issues.
The release of Groot N1 comes at a time when competition in humanoid robotics sector is on the rise. Companies such as X1 and Figure are working on scaling humanoid prototypes. On the other hand, industry giants like Google DeepMind and Nvidia are offering AI technology to drive these machines.
Recently, Google DeepMind launched Gemini Robotics, a collection of AI models to make robots more precise and agile when it comes to complex queries. With Groot N1, Nvidia is ready to compete with these advancements. The company plans to do so by giving robots advanced cognitive powers and autonomous decision-making.
Nvidia said it would publicly release simulation frameworks and blueprints for producing synthetic training data. This initiative is aimed at speeding up AI-powered robotics development across industries. Groot N1 is Nvidia's effort towards realizing the dream of generalist humanoid robots.