DeepMind acquires MuJoCo and makes it free
In one sentence DeepMind announces it has acquired MuJoCo, the physics simulator used in most RL and robotics research, and commits to making it free for everyone — a first step toward the full open-source release in 2022.
To teach a robot to walk, manipulate objects, or react to the world, you usually don't do it in the real world (too expensive and dangerous) but in a physics simulator on a computer. The most-used simulator was called MuJoCo: realistic, fast, and accurate — but paid and license-restricted.
DeepMind buys it from the original author Emo Todorov and makes an unexpected move: gives it to the world, free for everyone. From that day on, any student, PhD, or startup can use it without paying license fees, and in 2022 the full source code is released too.
It's a move that massively accelerates robotics and reinforcement learning research, by removing a real economic barrier.
Companies
DeepMind
Tools
MuJoCo
Tags
Sources