Wirobotics Unveils Simulation Model for Humanoid Robot ‘ALLEX’

Wirobotics has taken a major step in building a physical AI ecosystem by publicly releasing the simulation model for its humanoid robot, ‘ALLEX.’ The model, designed to minimize discrepancies with the physical robot, supports multiple formats including MuJoCo, Isaac Sim, and ROS, enabling researchers to conduct control and learning studies without access to the actual hardware. This strategic move aims to capture the developer community ahead of the company’s planned supply of research platforms later this year. Wirobotics plans to sequentially release its core technologies to expand an open development ecosystem.

Global robotics company Wirobotics has taken the first step in its technology disclosure roadmap aimed at building a physical artificial intelligence (AI) development ecosystem. On the 29th, the company unveiled the simulation model for its humanoid robot ‘ALLEX’ along with validation results confirming the model’s fidelity to the physical robot.

Wirobotics believes that moving beyond in-house robot development requires building an open development ecosystem where external researchers and developers can participate. The core strategy is to establish an environment where various algorithms and AI models can be researched and verified using simulation before the robot's release, a period when access to physical hardware is limited.

The newly released ALLEX simulation model focuses on minimizing the ‘Sim-to-Real gap,’ the discrepancy between a simulation and the real robot. Wirobotics explained that it precisely modeled the physical characteristics of the actual ALLEX, which features high back-drivability and force transparency. This allows researchers to conduct studies on control algorithm development, machine learning, and synthetic data generation based on ALLEX without needing the expensive physical hardware.

The simulation model is provided in multiple formats to support various robotic simulation environments. Specifically, these include the MJCF format for the MuJoCo physics simulator, the USD format for Nvidia’s Isaac Sim, and the URDF format for the Robot Operating System (ROS). This approach ensures that researchers familiar with different development environments can commence their work immediately without separate conversion processes.

This technology release is the first phase of Wirobotics’ physical AI technology disclosure roadmap. The company plans to sequentially release core technologies accumulated during the humanoid robot development process to expand the physical AI development ecosystem. Alongside the model release, Wirobotics also showcased a technical demo video on its official YouTube channel, proving the fidelity between the real robot and the simulation environment.

In the robotics industry, physical AI—where robots perceive and judge the real world to act physically—is rapidly emerging as a next-generation core technology. Particularly in the humanoid field, the ‘Sim-to-Real’ development methodology, which involves large-scale training and validation in a simulation environment that precisely mirrors the physical robot’s characteristics, is quickly gaining traction.

Kim Yong-jae, CEO of Wirobotics, stated regarding the release, “We plan to supply the ALLEX research platform by the end of this year. By releasing the ALLEX simulation model, we aim to enable more developers to begin ALLEX-based research even before the hardware is widely distributed, and to expand a development ecosystem where their findings can later be applied to the physical robot.”

This move is interpreted as a strategic play by Wirobotics to capture the developer community as the robotics industry shifts from a hardware-centric focus to a competition in software and AI platforms. The intent is to strengthen the software competitiveness of its future robot platform by first establishing a research ecosystem in a simulation environment before the physical robot hardware is fully deployed in the market.

출처: Finance Biggo