A single AI model simulates the behavior of many substances, from sliding sand to folding proteins

Researchers at MIT, UBC and elsewhere have developed WorldParticle, a deep-learning system that represents materials as Lagrangian particles and predicts their motion one step at a time, learning underlying dynamics rather than relying on hand-coded solvers. The model was demonstrated on six physical phenomena, including deformable objects, granular materials and proteins, with higher accuracy than numerical methods and modeled protein structural changes about 100 times faster than numerical simulators. The work will be presented at ACM SIGGRAPH Asia.