# The Internet of Physical AI Agents: Interoperability, Longevity, and the Cost of Getting It Wrong

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.15900 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.15900/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 16 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Empowering Edge Intelligence: A Comprehensive Survey on On-Device AI Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06027/) (2025)
- [A Survey on Fundamental Limits of Integrated Sensing and Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09954/) (2021)
- [Generative AI for the Optimization of Next-Generation Wireless Networks: Basics, State-of-the-Art, and Open Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17454/) (2024)
- [The Pace of Artificial Intelligence Innovations: Speed, Talent, and Trial-and-Error](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.01812/) (2020)
- [A Performance Perspective on Web Optimized Protocol Stacks: TCP+TLS+HTTP/2 vs. QUIC](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.07415/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Towards Trustworthy Physical Intelligence: From Theory to Practice Across Life Cycle](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.22877/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The Internet has evolved by progressively expanding what humanity connects: first computers, then people, and later billions of devices through the Internet of Things (IoT). While IoT succeeded in digitizing perception at scale, it also exposed fundamental limitations, including fragmentation, weak security, limited autonomy, and poor long-term sustainability. Today, advances in edge hardware, sensing, connectivity, and artificial intelligence enable a new phase: the Internet of Physical AI Agents. Unlike IoT devices that primarily sense and report, Physical AI Agents perceive, reason, and act in real time, operating autonomously and cooperatively across safety-critical domains such as disaster response, healthcare, industrial automation, and mobility. However, embedding fast-evolving AI capabilities into long-lived physical infrastructure introduces new architectural risks, particularly around interoperability, lifecycle management, and premature ossification. This article revisits lessons from IoT and Internet evolution, and articulates design principles for building resilient, evolvable, and trustworthy agentic systems. We present an architectural blueprint encompassing agentic identity, secure agent-to-agent communication, semantic interoperability, policy-governed runtimes, and observability-driven governance. We argue that treating evolution, trust, and interoperability as first-class requirements is essential to avoid hard-coding today's assumptions into tomorrow's intelligent infrastructure, and to prevent the high technical and economic cost of getting it wrong.