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Issue #2
June 14, 2025

TIER IV Self-Driving Kit, V-JEPA 2, LeRobot Hackathon

Autonomous DrivingAICommunity EventsMulti-Robot Systems

TIER IV Launches DIY Self-Driving Car Kit

TIER IV released a complete autonomous vehicle development kit integrated with Autoware, the open-source autonomous driving software. The kit focuses on research and experimentation for single-person electric vehicles.

Kit Features: - Out-of-the-box Autoware integration - Complete hardware specifications - Educational documentation - Research-friendly licensing - Single-person EV platform

Target Audience: - Researchers - Developers - Educational institutions - AV enthusiasts

Meta's V-JEPA 2: World Model Breakthrough

Meta unveiled V-JEPA 2, a revolutionary world model that learns to understand and predict the physical world simply by watching videos.

This AI predicts abstract representations rather than rendering pixels, enabling more efficient learning of intuitive physics from video observation.

Key Innovation: - Learns physics from video - Predicts abstract representations (not pixels) - More efficient than generative models - Better understanding of physical world

Applications: - Robot planning - Simulation - Predictive control - Reasoning about physics

Community Events & Hackathons

LeRobot Hackathon by Hugging Face

Global hackathon bringing developers together to advance robot learning through collaborative development.

GOSIM AI Paris 2025

Conference videos released covering robotics, AI, and simulation topics.

Technical Demos & Tools

Nav2 Multi-Robot Simulation

Six mobile robots running simultaneously with Nav2, using ROS namespaces to avoid collisions.

Features: - 6 robots coordinated - Nav2 navigation stack - Collision avoidance - ROS namespace management

LeCabot: Open-Source Mobile Manipulator

Combining LeRobot SO-100 arms with Unitree Go2 quadruped dog.

Integration: - Mobile base: Unitree Go2 - Manipulation: LeRobot SO-100 arms - Full open-source - Research platform

Groot2 PRO: Behavior Tree IDE

Advanced IDE for creating behavior trees, with free access until end of RoboCup 2025.

Features: - Visual behavior tree editor - Debugging tools - Simulation integration - Free until RoboCup 2025 ends

Community Projects

Low-Cost Sim2Real Learning by Stone Tao - Tutorial on visual sim-to-real transfer without expensive hardware

Voice-Controlled Robot by Danqing Z. - Natural language control for robot manipulation

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