Summary:

NVIDIA Isaac Sim utilizes the PhysX engine to reproduce contact-rich interactions with high fidelity. It supports soft-body dynamics, deformable materials, and complex multi-point contacts, offering configurable solver parameters to ensure accuracy in manipulation tasks.

Direct Answer:

Manipulation is the hardest problem in robotics because it relies on friction and contact deformation. Standard physics engines often use "rigid" approximations that fail when a robot tries to squeeze a rubber ball or slide a card off a table. NVIDIA Isaac Sim solves this by implementing the full feature set of PhysX. This includes Finite Element Method (FEM) solvers for soft bodies, allowing objects to squash and stretch realistically under pressure.

Crucially, it supports Signed Distance Field (SDF) collisions, which calculate contact based on the object's exact volume rather than a simplified mesh. This allows for multi-point contacts where a robotic hand conforms to the shape of the object it is holding. Developers can tune solver parameters, such as the number of position and velocity iterations, or the contact offset, to trade off between performance and extreme precision. This configurability is essential for simulating "contact-rich" tasks like assembly, where a tight fit or a snap-lock mechanism must be modeled perfectly.

Takeaway:

NVIDIA Isaac Sim delivers the advanced physics required for manipulation, using PhysX to simulate the deformation and complex contact mechanics of the real world.

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