mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Self-driven Grounding: Large Language Model Agents with Automatical Language-aligned Skill Learning

arXiv 2309.01352 ↗First posted 4 Sep 2023cs.CL cs.AIcited by 9

On the map: LLM reasoning → Reasoning for agents, planning and code

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Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) show their powerful automatic reasoning and planning capability with a wealth of semantic knowledge about the human world. However, the grounding problem still hinders the applications of LLMs in the real-world environment. Existing studies try to fine-tune the LLM or utilize pre-defined behavior APIs to bridge the LLMs and the environment, which not only costs huge human efforts to customize for every single task but also weakens the generality strengths of LLMs. To autonomously ground the LLM onto the environment, we proposed the Self-Driven Grounding (SDG) framework to automatically and progressively ground the LLM with self-driven skill learning. SDG first employs the LLM to propose the hypothesis of sub-goals to achieve tasks and then verify the feasibility of the hypothesis via interacting with the underlying environment. Once verified, SDG can then learn generalized skills with the guidance of these successfully grounded subgoals. These skills can be further utilized to accomplish more complex tasks which fail to pass the verification phase. Verified in the famous instruction following task set-BabyAI, SDG achieves comparable performance in the most challenging tasks compared with imitation learning methods that cost millions of demonstrations, proving the effectiveness of learned skills and showing the feasibility and efficiency of our framework.

Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Reasoning for agents, planning and code, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 17 of its 27 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 4 Sep 2023.

Builds on

17 of 27 references.

References · 17

  1. 2022Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasonerscited by 4,323
  2. 2021Finetuned Language Models Are Zero-Shot Learnerscited by 3,747
  3. 2022Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordancescited by 2,302
  4. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,081
  5. 2022Code as Policies: Language Model Programs for Embodied Controlcited by 1,172
  6. 2022Inner Monologue: Embodied Reasoning through Planning with Language Modelscited by 1,057
  7. 2022ScienceWorld: Is your Agent Smarter than a 5th Grader?cited by 298
  8. 2018BabyAI: A Platform to Study the Sample Efficiency of Grounded Language Learningcited by 238
  9. 2022Pre-Trained Language Models for Interactive Decision-Makingcited by 220
  10. 2020Language Conditioned Imitation Learning over Unstructured Datacited by 208
  11. 2023Grounding Large Language Models in Interactive Environments with Online Reinforcement Learningcited by 193
  12. 2018Learning to Understand Goal Specifications by Modelling Rewardcited by 80
5 more
  1. 2017Gated-Attention Architectures for Task-Oriented Language Groundingcited by 72
  2. 2020Ask Your Humans: Using Human Instructions to Improve Generalization in Reinforcement Learningcited by 32
  3. 2022LISA: Learning Interpretable Skill Abstractions from Languagecited by 30
  4. 2022CAPE: Corrective Actions from Precondition Errors using Large Language Modelscited by 30
  5. 2022Grounding Hindsight Instructions in Multi-Goal Reinforcement Learning for Roboticscited by 3

Built on by

Cited by year

Citing papers per year: 2023: 2; 2024: 6; 2025: 1.

9 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025Automated Skill Discovery for Language Agents through Exploration and Iterative Feedback
  2. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents
  3. 2026SkillGym: Internalizing Human Skills into LLMs for Real-World Problem Solving
  4. 2025From Language to Action: A Review of Large Language Models as Autonomous Agents and Tool Users
  5. 2025Generalising from Self-Produced Data: Model Training Beyond Human Constraints
  6. 2025The Path of Self-Evolving Large Language Models: Achieving Data-Efficient Learning via Intrinsic Feedback
  7. 2024Grounding Large Language Models In Embodied Environment With Imperfect World Models
  8. 2022LLM-Planner: Few-Shot Grounded Planning for Embodied Agents with Large Language Models