Unity Opens Simulation Pro Early Access for Robotics Developers

SAN FRANCISCO — Unity has opened early access to Simulation Pro, a robotics package designed to bring robot models, simulated sensors and Robot Operating System 2 software into its real-time 3D development platform.

The company announced the early-access release Sept. 22, positioning Simulation Pro for robot validation, sensor testing and synthetic-data generation in areas including manufacturing, logistics and warehousing. The package requires Unity 6.3 or newer and a Unity Industry license.

Simulation Pro includes an importer for Unified Robot Description Format, or URDF, files, allowing developers to bring an existing robot description and its kinematic chain into Unity. Unity also simulates LiDAR, cameras and IMUs and supports a Robot Operating System, ROS 2. A headless Linux build lets developers run simulations without a graphical interface and run multiple jobs on existing infrastructure.

The release packages features teams previously built with separate tools. Unity said the aim is to reduce the amount of custom infrastructure developers need to maintain before using its platform for robot testing.

Simulation Pro is in early access; independent testing of the robotics package hasn't been done yet. Unity has not published comparative results for sensor accuracy, URDF compatibility, and simulation performance. Additional coverage found by Robot24 mostly relied on Unity's announcement rather than independent evaluations.

Unity cited existing robotics and autonomous-systems projects to illustrate how its underlying technology has been used. It cited projects such as Japan's TIER IV having developed its Unity-based AWSIM simulator for testing Autoware autonomous-driving software. The Korea Institute of Industrial Technology built a digital twin of a metal-casting plant and, according to Unity, generated more than 100,000 labeled training frames in 14 weeks.

Medtronic developed a data logging and playback system in Unity for a digital twin of its Hugo robotic-assisted surgery system, capturing data from 195 procedures at five sites. Those examples occurred before the new package release and do not represent actual customer deployments.

Unity has pursued the simulation market before, with previous version debuted in 2021 and focused on scalable GPU-based simulations with SystemGraph integration. The company at the time cited autonomous-driving and robotics applications.

The current Simulation Pro is sold through Unity Industry priced at $4,950 per seat per year. Unity directs customers to sales for other licensing.