Insider Brief
- Ouster has released the Stereolabs ZED X Nano, a compact wrist-mounted stereo camera designed for robotic manipulation, imitation learning and high-throughput data collection in Physical AI applications, the company said.
- The system features a 1920×1200 global shutter sensor with up to 120fps capture, a ruggedized GMSL2 connection for industrial use and a zero-copy pipeline that streams data directly to GPU-based AI and encoding workflows to reduce latency and increase throughput.
- The camera also integrates with Nvidia Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab and ROS ecosystems, supporting sim-to-real development pipelines, while targeting improved depth accuracy and close-range sensing for precision manipulation tasks.
PRESS RELEASE —Ouster, Inc. (Nasdaq: OUST) (“Ouster” or the “Company”), a leader in sensing and perception for Physical AI, announced today the release of the Stereolabs ZED X Nano, a compact wrist-mount stereo camera engineered for robotic manipulation, imitation learning, and high-throughput data collection in the Physical AI era.
Built for the robotic arm: smaller, tougher, faster
As robotics teams scale imitation learning and reinforcement learning for manipulation tasks, RGB image quality and end-to-end capture latency have become critical bottlenecks. Legacy cameras rely on USB connectivity, capture low-resolution 720p RGB and depth, and require CPU-mediated pipelines that limit throughput and add latency.
Stereolabs ZED X Nano was designed from the ground up to solve these problems. Measuring 40% smaller in height than comparable solutions, the camera mounts directly onto robotic wrists and end-of-arm tooling where every millimeter matters. It leverages the same 1920×1200 global shutter sensor trusted across the flagship ZED X camera line, capturing high-resolution RGB and depth images at up to 120fps for training data and manipulation.
Durability is designed in. Sporting an onboard vibration-proof IMU, the camera is powered by ruggedized GMSL2 connection and next-generation cabling engineered for the repeated motion and cable stress of robotic arms, replacing fragile USB-C with an industrial-grade link that carries video up to 15 meters with EMI resistance and locking connectors.
Zero-copy pipeline for Physical AI
At the heart of the ZED X Nano is an ultra-low-latency capture pipeline with a fully zero-copy path from sensor to GPU, with frames flowing directly into NVIDIA hardware encoders and AI inference pipelines simultaneously. For data collection teams, this means higher-throughput dataset capture at full resolution. For deployment teams, it means running perception, segmentation, and policy networks in parallel on the same frames with more GPU headroom for the models that matter.
Neural Depth with sub-millimeter accuracy
Depth is powered by Stereolabs’s Neural Depth Engine, the leading AI stereo depth system with sub-millimeter accuracy in the Z-axis while delivering significantly better lateral (XY) positioning than traditional structured-light or time-of-flight cameras, a critical advantage for grasp pose estimation, fine placement, and assembly tasks where lateral error directly translates to manipulation failure. With a minimal depth sensing range of 3cm, the camera can also sense closer than comparable solutions in the market.
Native Integration with NVIDIA® Isaac™ and ROS
ZED X Nano is the latest Stereolabs product to offer first-class native integration with NVIDIA Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab for sim-to-real transfer, as well as native ROS and ROS 2 support. Teams building imitation learning or reinforcement learning pipelines can capture high-fidelity demonstrations, train in simulation with matched camera models, and deploy to hardware, all on the same sensor and software stack.
“Building on Stereolabs leadership in AI vision and perception solutions, the ZED X Nano allows us to go deeper into the industrial and robotics markets to win new sockets that require smaller form-factor placements,” said Ouster CEO Angus Pacala. “The future of Physical AI depends on massive amounts of high-quality, low-latency image data collected at the edge. With the ZED X Nano, we’re giving roboticists a major upgrade to their vision systems, enabling machines to sense, think, act, and learn with unprecedented precision.”
The ZED X Nano is available for pre-order starting today. For technical specifications, pricing, and integration details, visit www.stereolabs.com. Shipping begins May 2026.
Image credit: Ouster
