At NVIDIA GTC Taipei, NVIDIA unveiled the Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot, the first open humanoid reference design built on the NVIDIA Jetson Thor platform and the Isaac GR00T open software suite. This initiative aims to democratize frontier robotics research by unifying fragmented development processes, including hardware integration, data collection, simulation, training, and deployment, into a single accessible system. The reference design integrates Unitree H2 Plus humanoid bodies with Sharpa Wave tactile five-finger hands, creating a robust physical platform powered by the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor onboard computer. The system stands nearly six feet tall and weighs 150 pounds, featuring 75 total degrees of freedom across its body and hands to enable complex manipulation and movement. It is equipped with advanced multi-view sensing, including head-mounted stereo cameras, wrist cameras, and inertial measurement units. The robot boasts significant torque capabilities, with arms capable of 120 Newton-meters and legs of 360 Newton-meters, allowing it to handle payloads up to 15 kilograms. Powered by a Blackwell GPU architecture, the onboard Jetson Thor processor delivers over 2,000 FP4 teraflops of AI performance, supported by 128GB of unified memory to handle real-time sensor processing and inference. The unit includes a battery offering approximately three hours of operation and comprehensive connectivity options such as Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2. Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder and CEO, emphasized that humanoid robots will bring physical AI to major industries, creating a multitrillion-dollar economic opportunity. He noted that this open platform provides researchers with a unified foundation to accelerate breakthroughs toward general-purpose physical intelligence. The accompanying Isaac GR00T software stack enables a full development workflow for simulation, training, and deployment while ensuring researchers retain full control over their data and logs. The modular design allows teams to use the complete system or integrate specific capabilities into existing pipelines. Additionally, the Isaac GR00T developer platform will soon support the Unitree G1 humanoid robot, broadening its utility across leading institutions. Several prestigious research organizations have already committed to using the reference design. Stanford Robotics Center, ETH Zurich, UC San Diego's Advanced Robotics and Controls Laboratory, and the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) plan to leverage the platform to advance their research. Leaders from these institutions highlighted the benefits of having a capable, open system that allows them to share code, test ideas on real hardware, and validate robot behaviors more efficiently. They view the design as a critical step in moving from theoretical concepts to practical, real-world robotic applications. NVIDIA Research will utilize this reference design to further develop Isaac GR00T open models and frameworks. The physical robot is scheduled to be available for purchase through Unitree in late 2026. Meanwhile, the reference workflow for the Unitree G1 is expected to be released soon on GitHub and Hugging Face for developers. This announcement marks a significant step in standardizing human robotics research and accelerating the timeline from concept to deployment.