Sensors

Contents

Sensors#

See also

These pages are the source of truth for the isaaclab-using-sensors-actuators agent skill (skills/user/use-sensors-actuators/). When sensor behavior changes, keep the API documentation, maintained demos, these concept pages, and the skill synchronized.

Sensors turn simulation state or rendered scene data into batched measurements. Every Isaac Lab sensor derives from SensorBase and follows the same lifecycle:

  • prim_path selects the prim or prims measured in every cloned environment.

  • update_period sets the sampling period in simulated seconds. A value of 0.0 samples every simulation step.

  • update() advances the sensor clock. Sensor data is evaluated lazily when the data property is read, unless recomputation or debug visualization is requested.

  • reset() clears per-environment timestamps and internal state.

With eager sensor updates (scene.cfg.lazy_sensor_update=False), scene.update(dt) refreshes sensor data before returning. It advances sensor clocks in scene order, updating ordinary sensors individually and collecting sensors that support batch updates. After the loop, it refreshes the collected sensors’ pending buffers together. Each sensor retains its own update period and reset state. Camera sensors use this mechanism to batch captures by renderer.

Sensor data is exposed through ProxyArray buffers, including camera outputs. Use the torch property for a cached zero-copy Torch view or warp for the underlying Warp array.

Choose a sensor#

Sensor

Measurement

Typical use

Camera

Renderer-produced color, depth, normals, motion, and segmentation images

Vision observations and synthetic data

Ray Caster

First collision locations for configurable ray patterns

Terrain sensing, lidar-style queries, and ray-cast cameras

Contact Sensor

Net and filtered contact forces, contact points, friction, and contact timing

Locomotion, grasping, and collision events

Frame Transformer

Relative and world poses for configured frames

End-effector, foot, and object tracking

Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)

Angular velocity and proper linear acceleration

Inertial observations

Pose Velocity Acceleration (PVA) Sensor

Ground-truth pose, velocity, coordinate acceleration, and projected gravity

State estimation and privileged observations

Joint Wrench Sensor

Incoming joint reaction force and torque

Force/torque sensing and contact-rich control
Contents