Technical Directions
Robotics coverage relating to robot policies.
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LeRobot releases the π₀ model, a Vision-Language-Action (VLA) foundation model that jointly reasons over vision, language, and actions to control robots. It serves as the base architecture for π₀.₅'s open-world generalization. The model supports training, inference, and real-world evaluation with detailed code examples and setup instructions.
NVIDIA has released the GR00T N1.5 model, a cross-embodiment foundation model for generalized humanoid robot reasoning and skills. The model can be fine-tuned using teleoperation data from a SO-101 arm, with a detailed tutorial provided for developers. The release includes instructions for dataset preparation, fine-tuning, evaluation, and deployment.
Hugging Face introduces SmolVLA, a 450M parameter open-source Vision-Language-Action model for robotics, trained on community-shared datasets. It outperforms larger models in simulation and real-world tasks, supports asynchronous inference for faster response, and is designed for deployment on consumer hardware.
SmolVLA is a compact, efficient Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model designed for affordable robotics, trainable on a single GPU and deployable on consumer hardware. It matches the performance of larger VLAs through community-driven data, with a reference implementation and training instructions provided.
NASA showcased its robotic technologies and future space exploration vision at the 2025 FIRST Robotics World Championship, engaging over 55,000 students and 75,000 parents and mentors. The event featured interactive exhibits, including lunar rovers, robotic arms, and the Mars Perseverance Rover, with NASA centers highlighting innovations like automated assembly systems and surface manipulation technologies.
Sanctuary AI has demonstrated industry-leading sim-to-real transfer of dexterous manipulation policies using their high-degree-of-freedom hydraulic hands. The company leverages NVIDIA Isaac Lab, an open-source framework for robot learning, to simulate dexterity-focused training environments. This approach enables efficient training of autonomous robots, with the ability to train thousands of hands simultaneously and accelerate the learning process through online reinforcement learning.
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