This Open Source Robot Brain Thinks in 3D

"European roboticists today released a powerful open-source artificial intelligence model that acts as a brain for industrial robots -helping them grasp and manipulate things with new dexterity. The new model, SPEAR-1, was developed by researchers at the Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology (INSAIT) in Bulgaria. It may help other researchers and startups build and experiment with smarter hardware for factories and warehouses."

"SPEAR-1 differs from existing robot foundation models in that it incorporates 3D data into its training mix. This gives the model an enhanced understanding of the physical world, making it easier to understand how objects move through physical space. Robot foundation models are generally built on top of vision language models (VLMs) which have a broad but limited grasp of the physical world because training tends to come from labeled 2D images."

SPEAR-1 is an open-weight foundation model developed at INSAIT in Bulgaria to serve as a control brain for industrial robots, improving dexterous grasping and manipulation. The model integrates 3D data into its training pipeline to better represent the physical world and object motion through space. Many existing robot foundation models build on vision-language models trained primarily on labeled 2D images, creating a mismatch with robots operating in 3D environments. SPEAR-1 bridges that gap and achieves performance roughly comparable to commercial robot foundation models on the RoboArena benchmark, enabling faster experimentation by researchers and startups.

Read at WIRED