# GRUtopia: Dream General Robots in a City at Scale

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.10943 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10943/

## Key facts

- Cited by 59 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 48 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 48)

- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [Qwen Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16609/) (2023)
- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [Qwen-VL: A Versatile Vision-Language Model for Understanding, Localization, Text Reading, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12966/) (2023)
- [RT-1: Robotics Transformer for Real-World Control at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06817/) (2022)
- [Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardware](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13705/) (2023)
- [Matterport3D: Learning from RGB-D Data in Indoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.06158/) (2017)
- [Habitat: A Platform for Embodied AI Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01201/) (2019)
- [How Far Are We to GPT-4V? Closing the Gap to Commercial Multimodal Models with Open-Source Suites](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.16821/) (2024)
- [Vision-and-Language Navigation: Interpreting visually-grounded navigation instructions in real environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07280/) (2017)
- [AI2-THOR: An Interactive 3D Environment for Visual AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.05474/) (2017)
- [Open X-Embodiment: Robotic Learning Datasets and RT-X Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08864/) (2023)
- [DROID: A Large-Scale In-The-Wild Robot Manipulation Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12945/) (2024)
- [GLM-130B: An Open Bilingual Pre-trained Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02414/) (2022)
- [ALFRED: A Benchmark for Interpreting Grounded Instructions for Everyday Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01734/) (2019)
- [RLBench: The Robot Learning Benchmark & Learning Environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12271/) (2019)
- [CALVIN: A Benchmark for Language-Conditioned Policy Learning for Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03227/) (2021)
- [On Evaluation of Embodied Navigation Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06757/) (2018)
- [BC-Z: Zero-Shot Task Generalization with Robotic Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02005/) (2022)
- [Learning to Walk in Minutes Using Massively Parallel Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.11978/) (2021)
- [Learning agile and dynamic motor skills for legged robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.08652/) (2019)
- [MineDojo: Building Open-Ended Embodied Agents with Internet-Scale Knowledge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08853/) (2022)
- [ScanRefer: 3D Object Localization in RGB-D Scans using Natural Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.08830/) (2019)
- [Beyond the Nav-Graph: Vision-and-Language Navigation in Continuous Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02857/) (2020)
- [VirtualHome: Simulating Household Activities via Programs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.07011/) (2018)
- [InternLM2 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17297/) (2024)
- [Mobile ALOHA: Learning Bimanual Mobile Manipulation with Low-Cost Whole-Body Teleoperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02117/) (2024)
- [ProcTHOR: Large-Scale Embodied AI Using Procedural Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.06994/) (2022)
- [ScanQA: 3D Question Answering for Spatial Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10482/) (2021)
- [Transporter Networks: Rearranging the Visual World for Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.14406/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 59)

- [Understanding World or Predicting Future? A Comprehensive Survey of World Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.14499/) (2024)
- [Visual Spatial Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.05491/) (2025)
- [HOMIE: Humanoid Loco-Manipulation with Isomorphic Exoskeleton Cockpit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13013/) (2025)
- [InterMimic: Towards Universal Whole-Body Control for Physics-Based Human-Object Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20390/) (2025)
- [RoboVerse: Towards a Unified Platform, Dataset and Benchmark for Scalable and Generalizable Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.18904/) (2025)
- [InternData-A1: Pioneering High-Fidelity Synthetic Data for Pre-training Generalist Policy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.16651/) (2025)
- [NavDP: Learning Sim-to-Real Navigation Diffusion Policy with Privileged Information Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08712/) (2025)
- [EmbodiedCity: A Benchmark Platform for Embodied Agent in Real-world City Environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.09604/) (2024)
- [Articraft: An Agentic System for Scalable Articulated 3D Asset Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15187/) (2026)
- [Rethinking the Embodied Gap in Vision-and-Language Navigation: A Holistic Study of Physical and Visual Disparities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13019/) (2025)
- [UrbanWorld: An Urban World Model for 3D City Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11965/) (2024)
- [3D Scene Generation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.05474/) (2025)
- [Particulate: Feed-Forward 3D Object Articulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11798/) (2025)
- [VLNVerse: A Benchmark for Vision-Language Navigation with Versatile, Embodied, Realistic Simulation and Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19021/) (2025)
- [Compositional Generative Model of Unbounded 4D Cities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08983/) (2025)
- [SimWorld Studio: Automatic Environment Generation with Evolving Coding Agent for Embodied Agent Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09423/) (2026)
- [Towards Autonomous Micromobility through Scalable Urban Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.00690/) (2025)
- [Virtual Community: An Open World for Humans, Robots, and Society](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14893/) (2025)
- [SimWorld: An Open-ended Realistic Simulator for Autonomous Agents in Physical and Social Worlds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.01078/) (2025)
- [TIC-VLA: A Think-in-Control Vision-Language-Action Model for Robot Navigation in Dynamic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02459/) (2026)
- [MANSION: Multi-floor lANguage-to-3D Scene generatIOn for loNg-horizon tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.11554/) (2026)
- [MajutsuCity: Language-driven Aesthetic-adaptive City Generation with Controllable 3D Assets and Layouts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20415/) (2025)
- [LoGoPlanner: Localization Grounded Navigation Policy with Metric-aware Visual Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19629/) (2025)
- [NavComposer: Composing Language Instructions for Navigation Trajectories through Action-Scene-Object Modularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.10894/) (2025)
- [Imagine a City: CityGenAgent for Procedural 3D City Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.05362/) (2026)
- [Mind and Motion Aligned: A Joint Evaluation IsaacSim Benchmark for Task Planning and Low-Level Policies in Mobile Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15663/) (2025)
- [TongSIM: A General Platform for Simulating Intelligent Machines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.20206/) (2025)
- [See, Remember, Explore: A Benchmark and Baselines for Streaming Spatial Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23864/) (2026)
- [Instruct-Particulate: Scaling Feed-Forward 3D Object Articulation with Kinematic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.14699/) (2026)
- [Agent-as-a-Service based on Agent Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08446/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent works have been exploring the scaling laws in the field of Embodied AI. Given the prohibitive costs of collecting real-world data, we believe the Simulation-to-Real (Sim2Real) paradigm is a crucial step for scaling the learning of embodied models. This paper introduces project GRUtopia, the first simulated interactive 3D society designed for various robots. It features several advancements: (a) The scene dataset, GRScenes, includes 100k interactive, finely annotated scenes, which can be freely combined into city-scale environments. In contrast to previous works mainly focusing on home, GRScenes covers 89 diverse scene categories, bridging the gap of service-oriented environments where general robots would be initially deployed. (b) GRResidents, a Large Language Model (LLM) driven Non-Player Character (NPC) system that is responsible for social interaction, task generation, and task assignment, thus simulating social scenarios for embodied AI applications. (c) The benchmark, GRBench, supports various robots but focuses on legged robots as primary agents and poses moderately challenging tasks involving Object Loco-Navigation, Social Loco-Navigation, and Loco-Manipulation. We hope that this work can alleviate the scarcity of high-quality data in this field and provide a more comprehensive assessment of Embodied AI research. The project is available at https://github.com/OpenRobotLab/GRUtopia.