{"ID":2832984,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04770","arxiv_id":"2512.04770","title":"Embodied Co-Design for Rapidly Evolving Agents: Taxonomy, Frontiers, and Challenges","abstract":"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.","short_abstract":"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 contro...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04770","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.04770v2","authors":"[\"Yuxing Wang\",\"Zhiyu Chen\",\"Tiantian Zhang\",\"Qiyue Yin\",\"Yongzhe Chang\",\"Zhiheng Li\",\"Liang Wang\",\"Xueqian Wang\"]","published":"2025-12-04T13:12:50Z","proceeding":"cs.RO","tasks":"[\"cs.RO\",\"cs.AI\",\"cs.ET\",\"eess.SY\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false,"code_links":[{"ID":606291,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_id":2832984,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04770","paper_title":"Embodied Co-Design for Rapidly Evolving Agents: Taxonomy, Frontiers, and Challenges","repo_url":"https://github.com/Yuxing-Wang-THU/SurveyBrainBody","is_official":false,"mentioned_in_paper":false,"mentioned_in_github":true,"github_stars":0}]}