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Robotics & Automation News· Sam Francis·· 9 hours agoEditorial score35

Nebius and Positronic launch international physical AI competition for robot manipulation models

Nebius and Positronic launch physical AI competition to test robot manipulation models

Summary

Nebius and Positronic launched the Nebius × Positronic Physical AI Competition on October 26 to evaluate robotic foundation models. The contest offers over $20,000 in credits, starting with simulation assessments before advancing top teams to a Franka robotic arm for physical testing through December 2026.

Source: Robotics & Automation News · Read original article ↗

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What the source reports

Publisher-reported claims, with original evidence. These results have not been independently verified by RoboSignal.

Environment
SimulationOpen source S3

Reported numbers

  • GPU computing credits

    20,000

    View original evidence
    s will initially be assessed in simulation, with the 10 highest-performing teams advancing to testing on a physical robot arm. The competition offers more than $20,000 in Nebius GPU computing credits and Positronic evaluation credits. Testing AI models beyond demonstrations Positronic Robotics, which operates the independent PhAIL.ai physical AI leaderboard, says the competition is intended to address the lack of sta
    Open source S3
  • episodes

    >1,000 episodes

    Summed sensor-hours

    View original evidence
    ndardized, independent comparisons between robotic foundation models. According to the company, evaluations conducted through its DROID benchmark have tested open models across more than 1,000 episodes involving over 100 everyday manipulation tasks, using the same Franka robotic arm. The results indicate considerable differences in performance, with the strongest models completing approximately 70 percent of tasks on
    Open source S4
  • tasks

    >100

    View original evidence
    ndardized, independent comparisons between robotic foundation models. According to the company, evaluations conducted through its DROID benchmark have tested open models across more than 1,000 episodes involving over 100 everyday manipulation tasks, using the same Franka robotic arm. The results indicate considerable differences in performance, with the strongest models completing approximately 70 percent of tasks on
    Open source S4
  • paper: not_reported
  • code: not_reported
  • weights: not_reported
  • dataset: not_reported
Source excerpts and review record

Automatically extracted; no manual editorial approval recorded.

s will initially be assessed in simulation, with the 10 highest-performing teams advancing to testing on a physical robot arm. The competition offers more than $20,000 in Nebius GPU computing credits and Positronic evaluation credits. Testing AI models beyond demonstrations Positronic Robotics, which operates the independent PhAIL.ai physical AI leaderboard, says the competition is intended to address the lack of sta

Open source S3

ndardized, independent comparisons between robotic foundation models. According to the company, evaluations conducted through its DROID benchmark have tested open models across more than 1,000 episodes involving over 100 everyday manipulation tasks, using the same Franka robotic arm. The results indicate considerable differences in performance, with the strongest models completing approximately 70 percent of tasks on

Open source S4

Positronic Robotics and Nebius have launched an international physical AI competition aimed at improving robotic manipulation and establishing more consistent methods for evaluating AI models on real-world tasks. Announced on October 26, the Nebius × Positronic Physical AI Competition runs through December 2026, inviting developers and research teams to submit robotic AI models for independent evaluation. Participant

Open source S2

ion from competitions such as the DARPA Grand Challenge, which helped accelerate autonomous vehicle development through standardized technical challenges. The competition builds on the companies’ existing collaboration, under which Nebius became a founding partner of Positronic’s PhAIL.ai leaderboard. Registration and submission details are available at competition.phail.ai .

Open source S6

Source:Robotics & Automation News · roboticsandautomationnews.com

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