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BBC — Technology · September 18, 2026 · On the brief until October 2, 2026

The virtual worlds where robots are trained

RoboticsComputer ScienceEngineering
THE AI ANGLE
Automating virtual environment construction and driving onboard real-time predictive motion policies.

Robotics firms like Cambridge startup Vsim and tech giant Nvidia are advancing GPU-optimized virtual simulators that train robotic policies in minutes rather than days. By running high-speed simulations directly on onboard robot hardware, systems can evaluate tens of thousands of potential scenarios per second to adapt to dynamic, unstructured environments in real time. For robotics and engineering educators, these developments highlight critical breakthroughs in closing the sim-to-real gap, while also underscoring persistent difficulties in modeling complex physical interactions like deformable objects.

Summary written by AI Business Lens with an AI model from the article at bbc.co.uk. It is not the article, and the publisher has not reviewed it. For publishers.

THE TEACHING ANGLE
Students can analyze the algorithmic trade-offs between legacy physics simulators and GPU-native architectures, particularly the tension between simulation speed and physical fidelity when transferring policies to the real world.

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