Nvidia Robotics Platform CES 2026: The Race to Become the 'Android of Robots'

The 'Android moment' for robotics has arrived. Nvidia just dropped a massive suite of tools at CES 2026, signaling its ambition to be the default platform for generalist robotics. This move marks a pivot as AI transitions from the cloud to the physical world, where machines must learn to navigate, think, and act in real-time.

Inside the Nvidia Robotics Platform CES 2026: Cosmos and GR00T

At the heart of the announcement are new open foundation models available on Hugging Face. These aren't simple task-specific bots; they're designed to reason and adapt. The stack includes Cosmos Reason 2, a vision language model that acts as the robot's brain, and Isaac GR00T N1.6, a purpose-built model for humanoid robots. According to Nvidia, GR00T enables whole-body control, allowing humanoids to walk and handle complex objects simultaneously—a major leap in robotic dexterity.

Jetson T4000: Blackwell-Powered Performance

To power these brains, Nvidia introduced the Jetson T4000 graphics card, part of the Thor family. It's a powerhouse, delivering 1,200 teraflops of AI compute and 64 gigabytes of memory. What's impressive is its efficiency, running at just 40 to 70 watts. This provides the necessary on-device compute to make robots autonomous without relying on constant cloud connectivity.

Democratizing Robotics through Simulation

Validating robot behavior in the real world is slow and expensive. Nvidia's solution is Isaac Lab-Arena, an open-source simulation framework hosted on GitHub. It consolidates diverse task scenarios and benchmarks like Libero and RoboTwin into a unified standard. Major players like Boston Dynamics and Caterpillar are reportedly already using the platform to sharpen their edge in automated labor.