[Isaac Sim] How to add a functional ZED camera sensor to an imported URDF robot arm?

Hi everyone,

I am currently working on attaching a ZED Mini camera to the end-effector (last joint) of my robot arm. I used the example from this link: zed_robot_integration.

When running RViz, everything looks correct and the camera is successfully attached. I then converted the robot_with_zed_mini Xacro file into a URDF and imported it into NVIDIA Isaac Sim.

However, as you can see in the attached screenshot, the camera only imports as a structural Link (under Link6zed_camera_link and its sub-frames) along with the visual meshes. It does not contain an actual functional camera sensor component.

How can I add an active camera sensor to this setup?

  • If I go to Create -> Camera, it just creates a generic Isaac Sim camera.

  • If I go to Create -> Isaac -> Sensors -> ZED_X (just to test), it spawns a completely standalone camera that I cannot seem to attach or merge with the existing ZED camera link in my robot’s hierarchy.

If anyone has experience with this workflow (URDF to Isaac Sim with a ZED camera), please help me out or point me in the right direction.

Thank you in advance!