mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

RoboFoundry: System-as-Policy Evolution for Self-Learning Embodied Agents

arXiv 2609.32862 ↗First posted 26 Sep 2026cs.RO cs.AIcited by 1

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent skill learning and evolution also fits: Reinforcement learning for LLM agents

Abstract (arXiv)

A foundation model should not act in isolation as an embodied agent. Yet, existing methods often optimize individual components of the agent stack, such as memory, context, skills, or action interfaces, rather than treating the supporting system itself as a unified policy. Moreover, interaction alone does not yield self-improvement unless execution experience is converted into persistent, validated system changes. We therefore propose RoboFoundry, the first embodied agentic framework that formulates this process as Self-Evolving System-as-Policy. RoboFoundry diagnoses capability gaps in decision-making and memory management, converts execution traces into validated task-specific system updates, and promotes recurring improvements to the general system. Evolution operates over two complementary surfaces: a context system that manages active internal context and persistent file-system memory, and a hierarchical skill system that organizes atomic skills, reusable compositions, and failure-conditioned recovery. A shared semantic interface separates embodiment-invariant decisions from embodiment-specific execution, allowing evolved system capabilities to transfer across heterogeneous robots. On EmbodiedBench, RoboFoundry achieves state-of-the-art performance, notably improving GPT-5.5 by 27.8%. It also brings Qwen3.7-Plus to near parity with GPT-5.5 (70.3% vs. 72.7%), showing consistent gains from system-as-policy evolution across foundation models. For long-horizon memory, RoboFoundry outperforms all baselines on RoboMemArena by at least 39.0%, even against methods assisted by external foundation models. On LIBERO-PRO, it further outperforms Cap-Agent0 by 243.8%-679.7% across all perturbation types. In real-world deployments, RoboFoundry demonstrates zero-shot transfer and online evolution across robots and tasks, highlighting its potential for fully autonomous embodied agents.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent skill learning and evolution, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 24 of its 26 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 26 Sep 2026.

Builds on

24 of 26 references.

References · 24

  1. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,276
  2. 2023Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedbackcited by 3,442
  3. 2022Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordancescited by 2,348
  4. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,191
  5. 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,761
  6. 2023MemGPT: Towards LLMs as Operating Systemscited by 1,389
  7. 2022Inner Monologue: Embodied Reasoning through Planning with Language Modelscited by 1,081
  8. 2023ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learnerscited by 876
  9. 2023DSPy: Compiling Declarative Language Model Calls into Self-Improving Pipelinescited by 832
  10. 2024Automated Design of Agentic Systemscited by 407
  11. 2025Darwin Godel Machine: Open-Ended Evolution of Self-Improving Agentscited by 356
  12. 2025EmbodiedBench: Comprehensive Benchmarking Multi-modal Large Language Models for Vision-Driven Embodied Agentscited by 221
12 more
  1. 2025LIBERO-PRO: Towards Robust and Fair Evaluation of Vision-Language-Action Models Beyond Memorizationcited by 179
  2. 2024Embodied Agent Interface: Benchmarking LLMs for Embodied Decision Makingcited by 144
  3. 2026CaP-X: A Framework for Benchmarking and Improving Coding Agents for Robot Manipulationcited by 88
  4. 2026ASPIRE: Agentic /Skills Discovery for Roboticscited by 53
  5. 2026Harness VLA: Steering Frozen VLAs into Reliable Manipulation Primitives via Memory-Guided Agentscited by 47
  6. 2026ENPIRE: Agentic Robot Policy Self-Improvement in the Real Worldcited by 38
  7. 2026RoboClaw: An Agentic Framework for Scalable Long-Horizon Robotic Taskscited by 33
  8. 2026LLM-as-a-Verifier: A General-Purpose Verification Frameworkcited by 30
  9. 2026RoboMemArena: A Comprehensive and Challenging Robotic Memory Benchmarkcited by 22
  10. 2026Playful Agentic Robot Learningcited by 22
  11. 2026RoboHarness: Memory-Driven Orchestration of Heterogeneous Robot Policies for Long-Horizon Planningcited by 11
  12. 2026SkillMemo: Expert-guided Skill Memory Framework for Compositional Embodied Manipulationcited by 2

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Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

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  1. 2026EmbodiedRSI: Active Continual Robot Learning Through Hypothesis-Guided Co-Evolution
  2. 2026Self-Evolving Embodied Agents via Skill-Harness Evolution
  3. 2026Zetta zeta: An Efficient Closed-Loop Embodied Harness for Self-Evolving Physical Intelligence
  4. 2026Explore, Execute, Evolve: A Skill Acquisition and Reuse Loop for Embodied Agents
  5. 2026SEAR: Self-Evolving Agentic Robotics
  6. 2026EmbodiedEvo: Self-Evolving Coding Agent For Physical Intelligence
  7. 2026EmbodiSkill: Skill-Aware Reflection for Self-Evolving Embodied Agents
  8. 2026Self-Evolving AI for Humanoids: Mechanisms, Safety, and Evaluation of Post-Deployment Self-Improvement