NVIDIA Releases Isaac ROS 5.0 with ROS 2 Lyrical and Ubuntu 24.04 Support
NVIDIA’s new major release of its robotics software stack adds support for ROS 2 Lyrical and Ubuntu 24.04, agent skills, and an interface change requiring migration of some existing code.
On September 22, 2026, NVIDIA announced the availability of Isaac ROS 5.0, a collection of GPU-accelerated packages built on ROS 2. Release 5.0.0, marked with the v5.0.0 tag, adds support for the ROS 2 Lyrical Luth distribution and Ubuntu 24.04. It also introduces new tools focused on using AI assistants in the development of robotic applications.
Isaac ROS connects the standard ROS 2 ecosystem with acceleration on NVIDIA hardware. It is used for robotics components such as environmental perception, navigation, and manipulation. NVIDIA says the software is available free of charge; the project’s documentation and repositories are publicly accessible.
Isaac ROS 5.0 adds agent skills
The new version introduces AI agent skills in the open Agent Skills format. The release also includes tools for development environments and node migration. According to NVIDIA, these features are intended to help integrate agentic workflows into robotics software development.
The practical benefits of agent skills in production robotics workflows have not yet been independently evaluated. It will therefore be important to see how these tools perform beyond demonstrations and in projects with specific requirements for integrating ROS 2 nodes.
Moving from NITROS to rosidl::Buffer
A significant technical change is the discontinuation of direct use of NITROS interfaces. Isaac ROS 5.0 replaces them with the ROS 2 rosidl::Buffer interface with a CUDA backend. Several NITROS packages were removed from the release.
For existing projects, this means that code using APIs from the removed packages must be migrated. The scope of the required changes depends on the specific source code and how the project used the NITROS interfaces. This is therefore not merely an update to the supported ROS 2 and Ubuntu versions, but also a change to the relevant part of the integration layer.
Current foundation for ROS 2 and Ubuntu 24.04
Support for ROS 2 Lyrical Luth and Ubuntu 24.04 moves Isaac ROS to a newer foundation in the ROS 2 ecosystem. For developers already using or planning to move to these versions, the release provides an officially supported package of NVIDIA-accelerated components.
When deploying or upgrading, it will be advisable to pay particular attention to community experience migrating from NITROS to rosidl::Buffer and the CUDA backend. The expansion of package and hardware support in the ROS 2 Lyrical and Ubuntu 24.04 combination also remains an open question.
Sources
- NVIDIA Blog – Confirms the announcement, release date, availability of Isaac ROS 5.0, support for ROS Lyrical and Ubuntu 24.04, and new agentic workflows.
- Isaac ROS Release Notes – Confirms release 5.0.0, the v5.0.0 tag, technical changes including rosidl::Buffer, the CUDA backend, removed NITROS packages, and the migration requirement.
- NVIDIA-ISAAC-ROS on GitHub – Confirms the publicly available organization and Isaac ROS repositories as a collection of NVIDIA-accelerated packages for ROS 2.
Verified and updated: 09/22/2026 15:20
