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Excited to share FreeForm☁️: Reduced-Order Deformable Simulation from Particle-Based Skinning Eigenmodes at #CVPR2026 FreeForm enables fast elastodynamic simulation for robotics and beyond, directly on messy data (no mesh needed)!

10,937 views • 2 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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𝗣𝗼𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿 𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗻: "𝗝𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮." After working with many 𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 teams who've fallen into the simulation trap, here's what I've learned: Simulation teaches your robot to be really, really good at simulation. Unlike blind locomotion policies that can get away with sim-to-real transfer because they rely mainly on proprioception and contact forces, 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗴𝘂𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗱𝗼𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗴𝗮𝗽. The subtle differences accumulate: - Simulated friction vs real surface textures - Perfect lighting vs shadows, reflections, glare - Ideal object geometries vs manufacturing tolerances - Instantaneous sensor readings vs real-world noise and latency - Clean backgrounds vs cluttered, dynamic environments 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗰 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: Week 1: "Our model works perfectly in sim!" Week 2: "Let's collect some real data to fine-tune." Week 3: "The real data completely contradicts what the sim taught..." Week 4: "Okay, let's collect way more real data." Month 2: "We basically need to retrain from scratch." 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵: There's no shortcut to real-world data collection for vision-based manipulation. Simulation is amazing for debugging, prototyping, safety testing, and of course to supplement your real data. But it's not a substitute for understanding how your robot actually behaves in the actual environment. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀: Use simulation strategically - for exploring edge cases, testing safety boundaries, and rapid iteration. But build your production models on real data from real environments. The teams that succeed treat simulation as a powerful tool, not a magic solution. This is why Neuracore focuses on making real-world data collection so much easier and faster. Because the physics of your actual environment can't be simulated away. 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹𝘀, 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘀𝗮𝘆? 𝗪𝗲𝗹𝗹, 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁! 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘀𝗶𝗺-𝘁𝗼-𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗲𝗿? 𝗛𝗮𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗮𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱?

Stephen James

31,009 views • 1 year ago

A Letter to Our Community: The Road Ahead for Robotics To our Community and Partners, As we step into 2026, our mission at Axis is clearer than ever: Constructing the definitive End-to-End Scaling Layer for Robotics. Our goal is to accelerate the transfer of diverse human intelligence into Robotics General Intelligence (RGI). By owning the critical path of intelligence creation, we are turning the physical limitations of robotics into a scalable, software-driven future. Here is our strategic outlook and roadmap for the year ahead. The Core Thesis: Simulation is the Only Way Out The path to RGI is currently blocked by Data Scarcity, Generalization Fragility, and Hardware Fragmentation. At Axis, we believe Simulation is the only way out. Our Simulation Data Platform and Data Augmentation Engine transform raw data into "Synthetic Gold". Backed by academic milestones like Roboverse, Skill Blending, and GraspVLA, we have proven that pure simulation can achieve the generalization required for the real world. We don’t just collect data; we architect it. The Engine: Why Crypto? We believe RGI should come from all, not a few. Crypto is not just a feature; it is the primitive that powers our entire ecosystem flywheel: - Incentive Mechanism: Democratizing contribution and rewarding the trainers and developers. - Assetization: Turning proprietary data and refined models into liquid, ownable assets. - Verifiable Workflow: We are opening the "Black Box" of AI. By bringing total transparency to the Task Generation → Data Collection → Model Training pipeline, we ensure every byte of intelligence is verifiable, traceable, and secure. 2026 Strategic Deliverables This year, we are committed to delivering three foundational pillars: - The World's Largest Training Dataset for Robots: A robot training set—diverse, high-quality interaction data at an unprecedented scale. - A Robotics Foundation Model: A universal robotic brain trained on our pure simulation and synthetic data, capable of robust cross-embodiment transfer and open-world adaptability. - Evolvable Robot Hardware: Robots deployed with Axis models that autonomously evolve through continuous interaction, turning every deployment into a self-improving node within our RGI network. The Ultimate Vision We are building more than models; we are architecting the Distributed Machine Economy. A future where every dataset, model, and robotic embodiment is a verifiable asset in a global, autonomous network. Thank you for building the future of intelligence with us✌️📷

Axis Robotics

27,858 views • 7 months ago

Model-Free Reinforcement Learning (MFRL) has been alluring, especially with supercharged compute with physics on GPU. However, the methods use 0-th order gradients, and are often not the best optimizers. Can we do better than PPO in continuous control for robotics? Turns out yes! 🥳 tl;dr: Faster, better RL than PPO in continuous control 💪 The answer lies in using more information from the simulation. We are juicing the simulation on GPU as it is, why not use it for gradients as well? This has been a driving question in a series of our works. We first studied this problem in ICLR 2022 paper on Short Horizon Actor Critic Naive gradient based methods are stuck in local minima and have exploding/vanishing gradients. SHAC solved this problem truncated rollouts and model based value estimation, where the model is Differentiable Sim. This boosted sample efficiency and wall-clock time immensely especially in high dimensional systems such as humanoids Yet, given enough compute PPO often caught up. Our follow up paper on on Adaptive Horizon Actor Critic at ICML 2024 discovers the cause and provides a fix. However, we find that even when given ground-truth dynamics, not all gradients are useful due to sample error. 1st-Order Model-Based Reinforcement Learning methods employing differentiable simulation provide gradients with reduced variance but are susceptible to bias in scenarios involving stiff dynamics, such as physical contact. We find that back-propagating through contact and long trajectories drastically reduces gradient accuracy. Using this insight, we propose AHAC to dynamically adapt its roll-out horizon to avoid differentiating through stiff contact. AHAC is a first-order model-based RL algorithm that learns high-dimensional tasks in minutes (wall clock) and outperforms PPO by 40%, even in the limit of data provided to PPO. This work is led by Ignat Georgiev alongside Krishnan Srinivasan, Jie Xu, Eric Heiden and ample assistance from warp team at NVIDIA Robotics (Miles Macklin)

Animesh Garg

52,308 views • 2 years ago

𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲’𝘀 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 “𝗣𝗵𝘆𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝗜" - the idea that we can simulate real-world environments so well that robots trained in simulation will work perfectly in reality. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗲: Train in virtual worlds → deploy anywhere. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆: I’ve seen too many teams fall into this trap. After working with manipulation teams at Berkeley, Imperial, and Dyson, here’s the pattern: • 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝟭: “Our policy works perfectly in simulation!” • 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝟰: “Why doesn’t this work on real objects?” • 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵 𝟮: “We basically need to retrain from scratch with real data.” 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗮𝗽 𝘀𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻’𝘁 𝗯𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗴𝗲: Unlike blind locomotion policies that can get away with sim-to-real transfer because they rely mainly on proprioception and contact forces, 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻-𝗴𝘂𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗱𝗼𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗴𝗮𝗽𝘀. • Real friction vs simulated surface textures • Manufacturing tolerances vs perfect CAD models • Dynamic lighting vs controlled virtual environments • Sensor noise vs instantaneous virtual readings 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁: Building these detailed simulated environments takes forever. If it takes 7 days to build a simulated kitchen in simulation, wouldn't it be better to just collect real-world data in a real kitchen instead? 𝗗𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗺𝗲 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 - simulation is incredible for debugging, safety testing, and exploring edge cases. But it's not a magic solution to real-world deployment. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀: Use simulation strategically while making real-world data collection as efficient and flexible as possible. This is why Neuracore focuses on streamlined real-world data infrastructure. Because no amount of virtual training can replace understanding how your robot actually behaves in actual environments. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗵𝘆𝘀𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘆𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗲𝗻𝘃𝗶𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗻'𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆. What’s been your experience with sim-to-real transfer?

Stephen James

25,347 views • 10 months ago

📢 Our lab has been exploring 3D world models for years — and we’re thrilled to share **PhysTwin**: a milestone that reconstructs object appearance, geometry, and dynamics from just a few seconds of interaction! Led by the amazing Hanxiao Jiang 👉 PhysTwin combines **Gaussian splatting** with **inverse dynamics optimization** based on simple **spring-mass** systems. ⚙️ The result? Real-time, action-conditioned 3D video prediction under novel interactions (i.e., 3D world models). 🔑 A few key takeaways: 1. Having the right structure (e.g., particles/masses) helps navigate the trade-off between sample efficiency, generalization, and broad applicability. 2. Visual foundation models (VFMs) have matured to the point where they can provide rich supervision for world modeling (e.g., tracking, shape completion). 3. Beyond VFMs, many crucial components have come together in recent years: Gaussian splats for rendering, NVIDIA Warp for high-performance simulation, and scene/asset generation from a wide range of labs and companies. The future of 3D world models is looking bright! ✨ 4. The resulting digital twin supports a wide range of downstream applications—especially in data generation and policy evaluation, thanks to its realistic rendering and simulation capabilities. 🎥 All code and data to reproduce the results, along with interactive demos, are available on the website. Check the following visualizations of: (1) observations, (2) reconstructed state/actions, (3) interactive digital twins, and (4) the overlays between real-world robot teleoperation and our model’s open-loop predictions.

Yunzhu Li

25,279 views • 1 year ago