Rethinking Safety for Generalist Robots

2026-09-06

AI Summary

本文针对通用机器人引入的新风险，提出了一种新的安全概念——具身AI安全，并提供了一个研究议程来指导其安全部署。

Abstract

Generalist robots promise to transform our society: the same system that prepares a meal or folds laundry might also repair a car, inspect infrastructure, or care for a loved one. Yet this versatility introduces risks far beyond the collision- and force-based safety notions that have long dominated robotics. Notions of safety must now consider context (e.g., turning off a building's electricity is only safe during scheduled maintenance), user intent (e.g., asking the robot to ``clean the kitchen''includes unspoken expectations that the robot should not mix dangerous but powerful cleaning agents like bleach and ammonia), hard-to-model physical consequences (e.g., burning food during meal preparation), and more. We argue the need for a new era of robot safety---embodied AI safety---that broadens the hazards considered across the robot's lifecycle while recognizing that the safety of bits cannot be separated from the safety of atoms. We present a taxonomy of emerging risks and a full-stack research agenda to guide the safe deployment of generalist robots.

Problem

• Generalist Robots
• Safety
• Context
• User Intent
• Physical Consequences

Innovation

• embodied AI safety
• contextual safety
• user intent