MaGIC 2025

Date: September 9-10-11, 2025.

Location: DeLuca Forum, Discovery Building, University of Wisconsin-Madison – 330 N Orchard St, Madison, WI 53715.

Organizers: Dan Negrut, Radu Serban, and Luning Bakke, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Event Sponsors: National Science Foundation, Brian Eckrose Foundation, Komatsu Corporation.

Registration Link: https://charge.wisc.edu/GraingerInstitute/magic.

Registration Fee: $150 for industry participants; free for academia, federal/state employees, and consortium members.

At its 13th edition, this year’s MaGIC meeting emphasizes Digital Twin and AI technologies in fields such as terramechanics, mechatronics, bio-robotics, geomechanics, and embodied AI. The event is focused equally on terrestrial and extraterrestrial applications. This is an informal gathering that seeks to bring together individuals from industry, academia, and research labs in a collaborative “let’s learn from each other” environment. The goal is to facilitate technology transfer and promote cross-pollination between industry and academia within a pre-competitive setting.

Overview of the program:
Day 0: Tuesday, September 9, 2025: Chrono tutorials, for those contemplating using the Chrono simulator in their work.
Day 1: Wednesday, September 10, 2025: invited talks. Student poster session in the late afternoon.
Day 2: Thursday, September 11, 2025: invited talks.

NOTE: This event is free for participants from (1) state or federal institutions, (2) companies that are members of the Machine-Ground Interaction Consortium, and (3) academia. Otherwise, the registration is $150/person. Contact Dan Negrut at negrut@wisc.edu if you are a participant from a small company who can’t afford the registration fee.

Day 1: Wednesday, September 10, 2025

Day 2: Thursday, September 11, 2025

September 9, 2025: Tutorials highlighting the use of Project Chrono

As part of MaGIC 2025, the tutorial will provide instruction on Project Chrono, an open-source multi-physics simulation framework. The program consists of seven hands-on tutorial sessions covering subjects such as terramechanics, distributed co-simulation, construction processes, and sensor simulation. These sessions will demonstrate Chrono functionalities applicable to vehicle-terrain interaction and the design of autonomous systems. Participants will work with practical examples and have access to technical guidance. Here are the links to all the presentations and the code

Overview of the tutorial sessions

Chrono DEM Solver [recording]

Introduction to Chrono’s GPU-based Discrete Element Method (DEM) solver for simulating granular materials. We will show an example of granular material application with heat transfer phenomena. We will walk through a 2D rotating drum demo.
Duration: 2 hours

Chrono FSI framework for fluid solid interaction [recording]

Introduction to the Fluid Solid Interaction framework in Chrono that allows simulating interaction between mechanisms containing Rigid and Flexible bodies with water and granular material. We will go through the basics of how the framework is setup and how information is exchanged between different parts of Chrono. We will then show an example that leverage the framework:

• A Polaris RZR rigid tires moving over a wooden pontoon block floating on water simulated through FSI’s coupling with Chrono’s fluid solver;

Duration: 2 hours

Chrono CRM, high-fidelity terramechanics model [recording]

Introduction to a Chrono terramechanics model that regards the terrain as a continuum, instead of treating it as a collection of fine particles/elements. Chrono’s Continuum Representation Model (CRM) is physics-based, runs fast, and produces accurate results. We will cover the theory and the numerical method behind Chrono CRM and then walk through a demonstration of setting up a drawbar pull test with a full scale rover. The walk-through will be hands-on where we will live code the simulation setup, build it, run it, and visualize the results.

Duration: 2.5 hours

Synchrono, distributed co-simulation capabilities [recording]

Synchrono is a high-performance co-simulation framework that enables scalable, distributed simulation of robotic, vehicular, and infrastructure systems. It allows multiple Chrono-based simulation nodes—each representing a subsystem like a vehicle, sensor, or infrastructure component—to run concurrently on different processes or machines while maintaining synchronized state. In this session, we will cover the architecture of Chrono::Synchrono, the message-passing system, the data-distribution system used for inter-node communication, and how the framework supports modular simulation design across multiple computing nodes. We will then explore two example scenarios:

• Multiple autonomous vehicles driving as a convoy, with each vehicle simulated as an independent agent using its sensors and control logic.
• Multiple rovers traversing on SCM deformable terrain.

Duration: 1 hour.

Off-Road Autonomy Design on Chrono CRM Terrain [recording]

Application 1: RL Training with Terrain-Aware Domain Randomization

• Train a quadruped robot using reinforcement learning across various terrain types supported by Chrono.
• Conduct 95% of training on rigid terrain; apply the remaining 5% on CRM granular terrain for fine-tuning.
• Highlight performance gains from terrain-wise domain randomization and show generalization benefits on challenging off-road environments.

Application 2: Learning-Based Reduced Order Modeling (ROM) for Soil-Tool Interaction

• Use data-driven world model learning to capture the dynamics of a blade interacting with granular soil.
• Develop a simplified model (ROM) that approximates the soil-blade interaction with reduced computational cost.
• Discuss how the learned model can support downstream tasks such as motion planning and closed-loop control

Duration: 2 hours.

Chrono::Sensor for software-in-the-loop (SITL) development [recording]

Chrono::Sensor is a framework that simulates common sensors (i.e., camera, IMU, GPS, LiDAR) operating in Chrono virtual worlds. This allows for fast software-in-the-loop development of robotic and ground vehicle systems. We will begin with an introduction to the Chrono::Sensor API and implementation (manager, sensor filters). We will then learn to integrate the built in GPS, IMU, Camera and LiDAR models into a Chrono::Vehicle simulation. We will then briefly cover how to extend this system for SITL using Chrono::ROS integration and simulating a robot using an Extended Kalman Filter for perception. Finally, we cover camera models available and their use cases.