Our Journey to Physical AI – From the First Simulation to Isaac Sim

If you're serious about Physical AI, you can't avoid simulation. The question is: Where do you start?

This post describes the first two steps of our journey – from a pragmatic entry to a more powerful simulation environment.

Step 1: MachineLogic by Vention

We started with MachineLogic by Vention. For us, this was exactly the right first step:

• Full physics simulation – not just visualization, but real physical behavior.
• Directly integrated into the Vention ecosystem, which we use in our daily business anyway.
• No cold start – a seamless transition from design to simulation.

MachineLogic gave us low-threshold access to simulation without having to set up a separate toolchain. Anyone already working with Vention hardware has a natural starting point here.

Step 2: NVIDIA Isaac Sim via Brev

Eventually, you want more: higher simulation accuracy, synthetic data generation, domain randomization. That's where NVIDIA Isaac Sim comes in.

The challenge: Setting up Isaac Sim locally is not trivial. GPU requirements, driver compatibility, Omniverse dependencies – an entire day can quickly be lost before the first scene even runs.

NVIDIA Brev Launchables solves this pragmatically:

• Pre-configured cloud instances – Isaac Sim runs in minutes, not hours.
• Pay-per-use – no upfront investment in hardware.
• No setup effort – everything is ready to use immediately.

When Brev makes sense – and when it doesn't

Is a Brev Launchable the right choice for productive workloads? No. For that, you need dedicated infrastructure with more performance and persistence.

But that's not the point. Brev is useful for:

• Getting to know Isaac Sim without losing days to configuration.
• Running quick simulations to validate concepts early.

For us at Grasp Monkey, it's a practical way to test grasping scenarios in simulation before investing in dedicated infrastructure.

Our conclusion

Don't optimize the setup – optimize what you simulate. The infrastructure question comes later.

We will continue to share our Physical AI journey as we delve deeper into simulation, synthetic data, and the transfer to the real world. If you are on a similar path – get in touch.