Introduction

Welcome to the Physical AI & Humanoid Robotics book. This documentation is the primary learning companion for a capstone course focused on embodied intelligence, humanoid robot design, and conversational robotics powered by ROS 2, simulation, NVIDIA Isaac, and LLMs.

Use the sidebar to navigate: start with this Introduction, then open CH1 - Physical AI to explore the course overview and Chapter 1 content.

This landing page is the default entry point for readers and explains what the book is about, how the docs are organized, and where to go next.

• Purpose: Teach and demonstrate Physical AI and embodied intelligence, connecting AI “brains” to humanoid robot “bodies”.
• Audience: Students, engineers, and researchers entering physical robotics, humanoid design, and conversational robotics.
• Structure: Introduction → Chapters (CH1–CH4) → Labs (docs/labs/...) and course specs in specs/.

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Course & Lab Alignment

This documentation is now aligned with the Physical AI & Humanoid Robotics project constitution:

• Principle I – Physical AI & Embodied Intelligence: The material focuses on AI systems that act in the physical world and must understand physics.
• Principle II – ROS 2 Mastery: ROS 2 is treated as the core “nervous system” of our humanoid robots (nodes, topics, services, URDF, rclpy).
• Principle III – Simulation-First Development: Gazebo, Unity, and NVIDIA Isaac Sim are used for digital twins, physics, and sensor simulation.
• Principle IV – NVIDIA Isaac Platform Integration: Isaac Sim and Isaac ROS are used for photorealistic simulation, VSLAM, and Nav2-based navigation.
• Principle V – Humanoid Robot Design & Interaction: Kinematics, bipedal locomotion, balance control, and dexterous manipulation are central themes.
• Principle VI – Conversational Robotics with LLMs: Whisper and LLMs translate natural language into ROS 2 actions for vision-language-action (VLA) systems.

The course specification lives at specs/1-physical-ai-course/spec.md. Foundational labs (ROS 2 & Simulation) live under the Docusaurus docs labs/ folder:

• docs/labs/ros2_fundamentals/basic_nodes.py
• docs/labs/ros2_fundamentals/communication_examples.py
• docs/labs/ros2_fundamentals/package_creation.py
• docs/labs/simulation/gazebo_setup.sdf
• docs/labs/simulation/physics_config.yaml
• docs/labs/simulation/sensor_simulation.sdf

Use this introduction as your high-level orientation, then follow the linked labs and course materials to get hands‑on with ROS 2, simulation, NVIDIA Isaac, and embodied intelligence concepts.

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Where to Go Next (Topics)

From the sidebar, under CH1 - Physical AI, start with:

• Course Overview (/docs/chapter-1/course-overview):
  High-level course specification, roadmap, hardware overview, expectations, and the full Chapter 1 narrative (Foundations of Physical AI & Embodied Intelligence).

After Chapter 1, continue with CH2 – Physical AI Foundations, CH3 – The Digital Twin, and CH4 – Ethical AI & Responsible Design to deepen both the technical and conceptual aspects of Physical AI.