Data exchange with NOVA

The data exchanged between NVIDIA Isaac Sim and a NOVA instance falls into the following categories:

Data	Description
Robot state data	Live joint angles and TCP pose, streamed continuously at a fixed rate to keep the simulated and physical robot in sync.
Kinematics	The robot’s kinematic model used to interpret and reproduce motion.
Trajectories	Motion plans generated with the NOVA API that can be executed or visualized in Isaac Sim.
Robot configuration	Parameters describing how the robot is set up.
Instance, cell, and motion group data	The structure of the NOVA setup: the instance, its cell(s), and the motion group(s) within them.
Controller data	Information about the robot controller connected to the motion group.
IO / Bus signals	Read and write access to robot controller IOs and fieldbus, e.g., Profinet signals.

The extension is extensible: any additional data can be exposed through the Isaac Sim Extension API. Which data you use from the NOVA side depends on your application. For example, you can generate synthetic images in Isaac Sim and process them in your NOVA Python scripts, or create robot trajectories with the NOVA API and visualize them in Isaac Sim.

Controlling peripherals

Peripherals such as the gluing-gun master in a gluing cell can be driven alongside robot motion. For example, a NOVA instance can move the robot along a trajectory and, at the same time, send start and stop signals to the gluing-gun master. Peripherals are controlled in one of two ways:

• IO / Bus signals: trigger robot controller IOs or fieldbus, e.g., PROFINET, Bus IOs to start and stop the peripheral. See Connect IO signals with OmniGraph nodes.
• Direct API calls: control the peripheral programmatically through the NOVA API.

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