Attention
As of June 30, 2025, the Isaac ROS Buildfarm for Isaac ROS 2.1 on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal is no longer supported.
Due to an isolated infrastructure event, all ROS 2 Humble Debian packages that were previously built for Ubuntu 20.04 are no longer available in the Isaac Apt Repository. All artifacts for Isaac ROS 3.0 and later are built and maintained with a more robust pipeline.
Users are encouraged to migrate to the latest version of Isaac ROS. The source code for Isaac ROS 2.1
continues to be available on the release-2.1
branches of the Isaac ROS
GitHub repositories.
The original documentation for Isaac ROS 2.1 is preserved below.
isaac_ros_nvblox
Source code on GitHub.
A meta-package containing the relevant nvblox ROS 2 packages.
Quickstart
Complete the Developer Environment Setup.
Clone
isaac_ros_common
and this repository under${ISAAC_ROS_WS}/src
.cd ${ISAAC_ROS_WS}/src
git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA-ISAAC-ROS/isaac_ros_common.git
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/NVIDIA-ISAAC-ROS/isaac_ros_nvblox.git && \ cd isaac_ros_nvblox && git lfs pull
Pull down a ROS Bag of sample data:
cd ${ISAAC_ROS_WS}/src/isaac_ros_nvblox && \ git lfs pull -X "" -I "nvblox_ros/test/test_cases/rosbags/nvblox_pol"
Launch the Docker container using the
run_dev.sh
script:cd ${ISAAC_ROS_WS}/src/isaac_ros_common && \ ./scripts/run_dev.sh ${ISAAC_ROS_WS}
Inside the container, install package-specific dependencies via
rosdep
:cd /workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/ && \ rosdep install -i -r --from-paths src --rosdistro humble -y --skip-keys "libopencv-dev libopencv-contrib-dev libopencv-imgproc-dev python-opencv python3-opencv nvblox"
Build and source the workspace:
cd /workspaces/isaac_ros-dev && \ colcon build --symlink-install && \ source install/setup.bash
(Optional) Run tests to verify complete and correct installation:
colcon test --executor sequential
In a current terminal inside the Docker container, run the launch file for Nvblox with
nav2
:source /workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/install/setup.bash && \ ros2 launch nvblox_examples_bringup isaac_sim_example.launch.py
Open a second terminal inside the docker container:
cd ${ISAAC_ROS_WS}/src/isaac_ros_common && \ ./scripts/run_dev.sh ${ISAAC_ROS_WS}
In the second terminal, play the ROS Bag:
ros2 bag play src/isaac_ros_nvblox/nvblox_ros/test/test_cases/rosbags/nvblox_pol
You should see the robot reconstructing a mesh, with the 2d ESDF slice overlaid on top.

Try More Examples
To continue your exploration, check out the following suggested nvblox examples:
Launch file |
Arguments |
Description |
---|---|---|
|
|
Example to run with Isaac Sim (tutorial) |
|
|
Example to run with Isaac Sim including human reconstruction (tutorial) |
|
|
Example to run with Isaac Sim including general dynamic reconstruction (tutorial) |
|
|
Example to run with a RealSense camera (tutorial) |
|
|
Example to run with a RealSense camera including human reconstruction (tutorial) |
|
|
Example to run with a RealSense camera including general dynamic reconstruction (tutorial) |
|
|
Record RealSense data to replay with the above examples (tutorial) |
|
|
Example to run with a ZED camera (tutorial) |