RoboRacer Arena: Scaling High-Fidelity Autonomous Racing in Isaac Sim

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2608.23040v1
• Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2026 09:44:17 GMT
• Title: RoboRacer Arena: Scaling High-Fidelity Autonomous Racing in Isaac Sim
• Abstract summary: RoboRacer offers a standardized platform for research using 1:10-scale autonomous vehicles.<n>Existing occupancy-grid simulators allow for the quick addition of new maps, but they fail to include physical contact.<n>We have developed RoboRacer Arena, a system that creates 3D racing environments directly from occupancy maps.
• Score: 0.7144215606325006
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: RoboRacer offers a standardized platform for research using 1:10-scale autonomous vehicles, but the variety of available tracks hinders the process of acquiring policies. Although existing occupancy-grid simulators allow for the quick addition of new maps, they fail to include physical contact, while 3D simulators require each circuit to be implemented as a separate asset, thus limiting their scalability. In order to overcome this issue, we have developed RoboRacer Arena, a system that creates 3D racing environments directly from occupancy maps. Our method starts by using a flood fill algorithm to extract the drivable corridors and to identify the track boundaries, which are then used to establish the barriers. A distance field is calculated to define the collision boundaries. The track surfaces, collision properties, and materials are assembled into a USD stage, which allows for the automated and reproducible generation of the environment in Isaac Sim. The input maps can be obtained from SLAM sessions, from rescaled Formula 1 circuits, or from natural-language descriptions. When the input is based on natural language, we use Gemma 4 31B to generate a track specification without specifying any coordinates or geometry. To guarantee consistency and reproducibility, we apply geometric screening, procedural generation, and raster-level validation. The simulation environments are initialized in a time range of 1.18 to 2.48 seconds, with the initialization time increasing linearly as the raster size increases. In 30 matched trials involving 10 tracks and 3 seeds, 21 maps were generated and all passed validation. RoboRacer Arena currently contains 130 tracks and supports the generation of tracks from natural language. In benchmark tests, the system attains 8,707 vehicle-steps per second when using 256 parallel rigid-body vehicles, excluding the time taken for rendering and policy execution.

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