# A Neuro-Symbolic Framework for Reasoning under Perceptual Uncertainty: Bridging Continuous Perception and Discrete Symbolic Planning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.14533 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14533/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Nov 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Spatial and embodied reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/spatial-and-embodied-reasoning/)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Bridging continuous perceptual signals and discrete symbolic reasoning is a fundamental challenge in AI systems that must operate under uncertainty. We present a neuro-symbolic framework that explicitly models and propagates uncertainty from perception to planning, providing a principled connection between these two abstraction levels. Our approach couples a transformer-based perceptual front-end with graph neural network (GNN) relational reasoning to extract probabilistic symbolic states from visual observations, and an uncertainty-aware symbolic planner that actively gathers information when confidence is low. We demonstrate the framework's effectiveness on tabletop robotic manipulation as a concrete application: the translator processes 10,047 PyBullet-generated scenes (3--10 objects) and outputs probabilistic predicates with calibrated confidences (overall F1=0.68). When embedded in the planner, the system achieves 94%/90%/88% success on Simple Stack, Deep Stack, and Clear+Stack benchmarks (90.7% average), exceeding the strongest POMDP baseline by 10--14 points while planning within 15,ms. A probabilistic graphical-model analysis establishes a quantitative link between calibrated uncertainty and planning convergence, providing theoretical guarantees that are validated empirically. The framework is general-purpose and can be applied to any domain requiring uncertainty-aware reasoning from perceptual input to symbolic planning.
