Open-sourcing the MuJoCo physics simulator for robotics

#1

Post by stokaasto » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 3:20 PM UTC

Open-sourcing the MuJoCo physics simulator for robotics
deepmind.com

Re: Open-sourcing the MuJoCo physics simulator for robotics

#2

Post by jefft255 » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

This is really good news. It was a really contentious issue in RL and robotics research to be so reliant on proprietary (and very expensive) software.

Re: Open-sourcing the MuJoCo physics simulator for robotics

#3

Post by KaoruAoiShiho » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 4:11 PM UTC

Is this a competitor to physX?

Re: Open-sourcing the MuJoCo physics simulator for robotics

#4

Post by atty » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

I tend to be more than a little skeptical of organizations like DeepMind and (especially) OpenAI lately, when it comes to their pledges to democratize their advances in AI/ML/robotics. This, however, is 100% a great move by DeepMind in the support of the community as a whole. Kudos to the team, and a big thanks as well.

Re: Open-sourcing the MuJoCo physics simulator for robotics

#5

Post by asah » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

jefft255 wrote: post #2

This is really good news. It was a really contentious issue in RL and robotics research to be so reliant on proprietary (and very expensive) software.

+1 - plus, it's an immediate barrier for attracting new people to the field.

Re: Open-sourcing the MuJoCo physics simulator for robotics

#6

Post by modeless » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

Great news! It was a real issue that so much RL research relied on non-free software. It was a problem that a big pile of money could solve, so I'm glad someone with a big pile of money did :)

Re: Open-sourcing the MuJoCo physics simulator for robotics

#7

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Open-sourcing the MuJoCo physics simulator for robotics

#8

Post by bionhoward » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

This is huge for the open source ML community because so many academic and commercial projects rely on MuJoCo which is out of reach for folks working on hobby projects or at tiny startups. This makes a lot more AI environments work for everyone. Major props to DeepMind

Re: Open-sourcing the MuJoCo physics simulator for robotics

#9

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Open-sourcing the MuJoCo physics simulator for robotics

#10

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #3

Is this a competitor to physX?

Nope. PhysX is all about realtime and gaming is the end use it was designed around. TFA has a section about why that’s bad. The different end uses mean there are miles of differences between them even though they’re both physics simulators.