Tech giant Nvidia announced a partnership with Disney Research and Google DeepMind to develop a physics engine meant to improve robotic simulation and movements in real-world environments. The engine will be named Newtown.
Newton is an open-source, extensible physics engine being developed to advance robot learning and development. Newtown is built on NVIDIA Warp which enables robots to learn how to handle complex tasks with better precision.
The physics engine is compatible with frameworks such asMuJoCo Playground or NVIDIA Isaac Lab—an open-source, unified framework for robot learning.
MuJoCo-Warp is Google DeepMind’s open-source robotics simulator accelerated by Warp. The simulator enables developers to achieve performance gains, with more than a 70x acceleration for humanoid simulations and a 100x speedup for in-hand manipulation tasks.
Disney Research will be the first organisation to use Newtown to advance its robotic character platform which powers entertainment robots such as the Star Wars-inspired BDX droids.
“This collaboration will allow us to create a new generation of robotic characters that are more expressive and engaging than ever before. We’re committed to bringing more characters to life in ways the world hasn’t seen before, and this collaboration with Disney Research, NVIDIA, and Google DeepMind is a key part of that vision,” said Kyle Laughlin, SVP, Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development.
Beyond the partnership, Huang also announced several other significant advancements across various Nvidia domains. These included new, enhanced Blackwell Ultra chips and the upcoming Vera Rubin AI platform to power next-gen AI models.
The GeForce 5090 graphics card was announced for AI-enhanced graphics, along with the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell GPU for professional workloads.
Additionally, the company announced a few new robotics products, such as the Isaac GR00T N1 robotics open-source model. New AI systems, the DGX Spark and DGX Station were revealed as new tools for developers and researchers. Lastly, Nvidia announced that it would expand its Omniverse platform.
Editor of Tech Africa. With a degree in Media Studies and Communication from the University of the Free State, I bring a wealth of experience in journalism and copywriting.
