Adapting robots to new objects and tasks requires interaction experience that can be costly to obtain. We present WorldContact, a contact-centric world model for deformable-object manipulation, constructed from a limited set of high-quality trajectories to generate additional training data efficiently. It predicts object dynamics using larger time steps than the source numerical simulator, which requires small integration steps to resolve rapid motion and prevent interpenetration. We evaluate WorldContact across 16 shopping-bag manipulation tasks. State-rollout measurements on a single H100 GPU show a $10\times$ speedup over the source simulator, excluding rendering and disk I/O. We use the generated data to fine-tune an existing vision-language-action policy and deploy it directly on a real robot. In bag lifting, the same policy achieves 65% single-attempt success when fine-tuned on source simulation data alone, compared with 95% when fine-tuned on the dataset expanded with WorldContact. These results support efficient data generation with WorldContact for robot policy adaptation.
The results are packaged in the Greenfield Startup Model (GSM), which explains the priority of startups to release the product as quickly as possible, and the need to shorten time-to-market, by speeding up the development through low-precision engineering activities.
Carmine Giardino, Nicolò Paternoster, M. Unterkalmsteiner et al.· IEEE Transactions on Softwar...· 178 citations· ⚡14
Software startup companies develop innovative, software-intensive products within limited timeframes and with few resources, searching for sustainable and scalable business models.
M. Unterkalmsteiner, P. Abrahamsson, Xiaofeng Wang et al.· e-Informatica Software Engin...· 157 citations· ⚡17
This study conducts a case survey study based on the secondary data of the major pivots happened in 49 software startups, and demonstrates that customer need pivot is the most common among all pivot types.
Sohaib Shahid Bajwa, Xiaofeng Wang, Anh Nguyen-Duc et al.· Empirical Software Engineeri...· 127 citations· ⚡15
The comparison of adopter and non-adopter sample reveals three potential adoption inhibitor, security, data privacy, and portability, which underlines the importance of the technical and security perspectives for research investigating the adoption of technology.
Nattakarn Phaphoom, Xiaofeng Wang, S. Samuel et al.· Journal of Systems and Softw...· 111 citations· ⚡8
This study investigates how Lean internal startup facilitates software product innovation in large companies and identifies its enablers and inhibitors, and shows the potential of the method-in-action framework to investigate the Lean startup approach in non-startup context.
Henry Edison, Nina M. Smørsgård, Xiaofeng Wang et al.· Journal of Systems and Softw...· 78 citations· ⚡6
The application of agile software methods and more recently the integration of Lean practices contribute to the trend of continuous improvement in the software industry. One such area warranting proper empirical evidence is a project’s operational efficiency when using the Kanban method. This short paper takes a new angle and explores waste in the Kanban-driven software development project context. A preliminary research model is presented for helping the consequent replication of the study. The results from the empirical analysis suggest Kanban can be an effective method in visualizing and organizing the current work, but does not prevent waste from creeping in, although the overall project outcome may be successful.
Marko Ikonen, Petri Kettunen, Nilay V. Oza et al.· EUROMICRO Conference on Soft...· 67 citations· ⚡9
Custom-made molecules are advancing medicine, materials, and agriculture, but producing them is slow and expensive. A new Nature paper highlights RetroChimera, a predictive model that helps accelerate chemical synthesis, helping researchers explore a wide range of molecules. The post Improving synthesis prediction of small molecules at scale with RetroChimera appeared first on Microsoft Research.
MIT News · Artificial Intelligence· news.mit.eduSep 14, 2026
The “HardFlow” algorithm could help generative AI models produce high-quality outputs that obey strict requirements when “pretty close” doesn’t cut it.
AI may appear weightless, but every model depends on physical infrastructure. To understand responsible AI, we need to look beyond algorithms and consider the entire lifecycle of the hardware behind them. The post Responsible AI Must Consider Its Afterlife appeared first on GPT-Lab.
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