Preprint · 2025

Embodied Agent Interface: Benchmarking LLMs for Embodied Decision Making

Manling Li, Shiyu Zhao, Qineng Wang, Kangrui Wang, Yu Zhou, Sanjana Srivastava, Cem Gokmen, Tony Lee, Li Erran Li, Ruohan Zhang, Weiyu Liu, Percy Liang, Li Fei-Fei, Jiayuan Mao, Jiajun Wu

Abstract

We aim to evaluate Large Language Models (LLMs) for embodied decision making. While a significant body of work has been leveraging LLMs for decision making in embodied environments, we still lack a systematic understanding of their performance because they are usually applied in different domains, for different purposes, and built based on different inputs and outputs. Furthermore, existing evaluations tend to rely solely on a final success rate, making it difficult to pinpoint what ability is missing in LLMs and where the problem lies, which in turn blocks embodied agents from leveraging LLMs effectively and selectively. To address these limitations, we propose a generalized interface (Embodied Agent Interface) that supports the formalization of various types of tasks and input-output specifications of LLM-based modules. Specifically, it allows us to unify 1) a broad set of embodied decision-making tasks involving both state and temporally extended goals, 2) four commonly-used LLM-based modules for decision making: goal interpretation, subgoal decomposition, action sequencing, and transition modeling, and 3) a collection of fine-grained metrics which break down evaluation into various types of errors, such as hallucination errors, affordance errors, various types of planning errors, etc. Overall, our benchmark offers a comprehensive assessment of LLMs' performance for different subtasks, pinpointing the strengths and weaknesses in LLM-powered embodied AI systems, and providing insights for effective and selective use of LLMs in embodied decision making.

BibTeX Copy

@misc{li_embodied_2025,
	title = {Embodied {Agent} {Interface}: {Benchmarking} {LLMs} for {Embodied} {Decision} {Making}},
	shorttitle = {Embodied {Agent} {Interface}},
	url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2410.07166},
	doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2410.07166},
	abstract = {We aim to evaluate Large Language Models (LLMs) for embodied decision making. While a significant body of work has been leveraging LLMs for decision making in embodied environments, we still lack a systematic understanding of their performance because they are usually applied in different domains, for different purposes, and built based on different inputs and outputs. Furthermore, existing evaluations tend to rely solely on a final success rate, making it difficult to pinpoint what ability is missing in LLMs and where the problem lies, which in turn blocks embodied agents from leveraging LLMs effectively and selectively. To address these limitations, we propose a generalized interface (Embodied Agent Interface) that supports the formalization of various types of tasks and input-output specifications of LLM-based modules. Specifically, it allows us to unify 1) a broad set of embodied decision-making tasks involving both state and temporally extended goals, 2) four commonly-used LLM-based modules for decision making: goal interpretation, subgoal decomposition, action sequencing, and transition modeling, and 3) a collection of fine-grained metrics which break down evaluation into various types of errors, such as hallucination errors, affordance errors, various types of planning errors, etc. Overall, our benchmark offers a comprehensive assessment of LLMs' performance for different subtasks, pinpointing the strengths and weaknesses in LLM-powered embodied AI systems, and providing insights for effective and selective use of LLMs in embodied decision making.},
	urldate = {2026-11-07},
	publisher = {arXiv},
	author = {Li, Manling and Zhao, Shiyu and Wang, Qineng and Wang, Kangrui and Zhou, Yu and Srivastava, Sanjana and Gokmen, Cem and Lee, Tony and Li, Li Erran and Zhang, Ruohan and Liu, Weiyu and Liang, Percy and Fei-Fei, Li and Mao, Jiayuan and Wu, Jiajun},
	month = jan,
	year = {2025},
	note = {arXiv:2410.07166 [cs.CL]},
	keywords = {Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science - Computation and Language, Computer Science - Machine Learning, Computer Science - Robotics},
}