Body of Proof: Why Embodied AI Needs More Than One Mind
Embodied Intelligence: A Different Kind of Smart Artificial intelligence is no longer confined to static models that churn numbers in isolation. A powerful shift is underway—toward embodied AI, where intelligence is physically situated in the world. Unlike stateless AI models that treat the world as a dataset, embodied AI experiences the environment through sensors and acts through physical or simulated bodies. This concept, championed by early thinkers like Rolf Pfeifer and Fumiya Iida (2004), emphasizes that true intelligence arises from an agent’s interactions with its surroundings—not just abstract reasoning. Later surveys, such as Duan et al. (2022), further detail how modern embodied AI systems blend simulation, perception, action, and learning in environments that change dynamically. ...