Semantic Glitch: Agency and Artistry in an Autonomous Pixel Cloud
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Abstract (arXiv)
While mainstream robotics pursues metric precision and flawless performance, this paper explores the creative potential of a deliberately "lo-fi" approach. We present the "Semantic Glitch," a soft flying robotic art installation whose physical form, a 3D pixel style cloud, is a "physical glitch" derived from digital archaeology. We detail a novel autonomous pipeline that rejects conventional sensors like LiDAR and SLAM, relying solely on the qualitative, semantic understanding of a Multimodal Large Language Model to navigate. By authoring a bio-inspired personality for the robot through a natural language prompt, we create a "narrative mind" that complements the "weak," historically, loaded body. Our analysis begins with a 13-minute autonomous flight log, and a follow-up study statistically validates the framework's robustness for authoring quantifiably distinct personas. The combined analysis reveals emergent behaviors, from landmark-based navigation to a compelling "plan to execution" gap, and a character whose unpredictable, plausible behavior stems from a lack of precise proprioception. This demonstrates a lo-fi framework for creating imperfect companions whose success is measured in character over efficiency.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 6 of its 27 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 Nov 2025.
Builds on
6 of 27 references.
References · 6
- 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,459
- 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 3,080
- 2015VQA: Visual Question Answeringcited by 2,506
- 2024EMMA: End-to-End Multimodal Model for Autonomous Drivingcited by 231
- 2025Cuddle-Fish: Exploring a Soft Floating Robot with Flapping Wings for Physical Interactionscited by 1
- 2025Multi Layered Autonomy and AI Ecologies in Robotic Art Installationscited by 1
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- 2025Imagine, Verify, Execute: Memory-guided Agentic Exploration with Vision-Language Models
- 2026Are Frontier VLM Agents Ready to Be Robot Generalists? An Empirical Study with the Embodied Agent Arena
- 2026RADAR: Benchmarking Vision-Language-Action Generalization via Real-World Dynamics, Spatial-Physical Intelligence, and Autonomous Evaluation
- 2025Fake or Real, Can Robots Tell? Evaluating VLM Robustness to Domain Shift in Single-View Robotic Scene Understanding
- 2026Action Hallucination in Generative Vision-Language-Action Models
- 2026The Yes-Man Syndrome: Benchmarking Abstention in Embodied Robotic Agents
- 2024RoboPoint: A Vision-Language Model for Spatial Affordance Prediction for Robotics
- 2024UnrealZoo: Enriching Photo-realistic Virtual Worlds for Embodied AI