Semantic Intelligence: A Bio-Inspired Cognitive Framework for Embodied Agents

Abstract: Recent advancements in LLMs have greatly enhanced natural language understanding and content generation. However, these models primarily operate in disembodied digital environments and lack interaction with the physical world. To address this limitation, Embodied Artificial Intelligence (EAI) has emerged, focusing on agents that can perceive and interact with their surroundings. Despite progress, current embodied agents face challenges in unstructured real-world environments due to insufficient semantic intelligence, which is critical for understanding and reasoning about complex tasks. This paper introduces the Semantic Intelligence-Driven Embodied (SIDE) agent framework, which integrates a hierarchical semantic cognition architecture with a semantic-driven decision-making process. This enables agents to reason about and interact with the physical world in a contextually adaptive manner. The framework is inspired by biological cognitive mechanisms and utilizes bio-inspired principles to design a semantic cognitive architecture that mimics how humans and animals integrate and process sensory information. We present this framework as a step toward developing more intelligent and versatile embodied agents.