Embodied Co-Design for Rapidly Evolving Agents: Taxonomy, Frontiers, and Challenges
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866909965995737088 |
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| author | Wang, Yuxing Chen, Zhiyu Zhang, Tiantian Yin, Qiyue Chang, Yongzhe Li, Zhiheng Wang, Liang Wang, Xueqian |
| author_facet | Wang, Yuxing Chen, Zhiyu Zhang, Tiantian Yin, Qiyue Chang, Yongzhe Li, Zhiheng Wang, Liang Wang, Xueqian |
| contents | Brain-body co-evolution enables animals to develop complex behaviors in their environments. Inspired by this biological synergy, embodied co-design (ECD) has emerged as a transformative paradigm for creating intelligent agents-from virtual creatures to physical robots-by jointly optimizing their morphologies and controllers rather than treating control in isolation. This integrated approach facilitates richer environmental interactions and robust task performance. In this survey, we provide a systematic overview of recent advances in ECD. We first formalize the concept of ECD and position it within related fields. We then introduce a hierarchical taxonomy: a lower layer that breaks down agent design into three fundamental components-controlling brain, body morphology, and task environment-and an upper layer that integrates these components into four major ECD frameworks: bi-level, single-level, generative, and open-ended. This taxonomy allows us to synthesize insights from more than one hundred recent studies. We further review notable benchmarks, datasets, and applications in both simulated and real-world scenarios. Finally, we identify significant challenges and offer insights into promising future research directions. A project associated with this survey has been created at https://github.com/Yuxing-Wang-THU/SurveyBrainBody. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_04770 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Embodied Co-Design for Rapidly Evolving Agents: Taxonomy, Frontiers, and Challenges Wang, Yuxing Chen, Zhiyu Zhang, Tiantian Yin, Qiyue Chang, Yongzhe Li, Zhiheng Wang, Liang Wang, Xueqian Robotics Artificial Intelligence Emerging Technologies Systems and Control Brain-body co-evolution enables animals to develop complex behaviors in their environments. Inspired by this biological synergy, embodied co-design (ECD) has emerged as a transformative paradigm for creating intelligent agents-from virtual creatures to physical robots-by jointly optimizing their morphologies and controllers rather than treating control in isolation. This integrated approach facilitates richer environmental interactions and robust task performance. In this survey, we provide a systematic overview of recent advances in ECD. We first formalize the concept of ECD and position it within related fields. We then introduce a hierarchical taxonomy: a lower layer that breaks down agent design into three fundamental components-controlling brain, body morphology, and task environment-and an upper layer that integrates these components into four major ECD frameworks: bi-level, single-level, generative, and open-ended. This taxonomy allows us to synthesize insights from more than one hundred recent studies. We further review notable benchmarks, datasets, and applications in both simulated and real-world scenarios. Finally, we identify significant challenges and offer insights into promising future research directions. A project associated with this survey has been created at https://github.com/Yuxing-Wang-THU/SurveyBrainBody. |
| title | Embodied Co-Design for Rapidly Evolving Agents: Taxonomy, Frontiers, and Challenges |
| topic | Robotics Artificial Intelligence Emerging Technologies Systems and Control |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04770 |