Robots of the future will learn just like they would in Star Trek's Holodeck

When future robots enter the world, they won't have a learning curve. Artificial intelligence researchers are creating tools to help teach the robots that will assemble our gadgets in factories, or do chores around our home, before they ever step (or roll) into the real world. These simulators, most recently announced by Nvidia as a project called Isaac's Lab but also pioneered by Alphabet's DeepMind and Elon Musk's OpenAI, are 3D spaces that have physics just like reality, with virtual objects that act the same way as their physical counterparts. Virtual spaces are required because one way of teaching robots is a method called reinforcement learning, or the chore of doing one task over and over again until it's done correctly. In a simulation, training the bots can be done more quickly and cheaply than in real life because lots of simulated robots can learn at once.