Networked Humanoid Intelligence: Communication, Coordination, Collaboration, and Social Interaction

Abstract:Humanoid robots are moving from laboratory platforms toward connected fleets that share workspaces, infrastructure, tasks, and knowledge with other robots and humans. As deployments grow, the operation and improvement of each humanoid depend on information exchanged across the network. However, existing research has largely studied humanoids as individual systems. This survey examines networked humanoid intelligence through four functions of information exchange: communication, coordination, collaboration, and social intelligence with human interaction. We first establish the foundations of networked humanoid systems, define the question addressed by each function, and connect them through a common factory scenario. We review the literature along six dimensions: interaction architecture, exchanged information, physical coupling, operating timescale, system scale, and embodiment. We separate results obtained with physical and simulated humanoids from those based on other robotic platforms or disembodied agents, because the latter do not fully capture humanoid-specific constraints such as balance, whole-body motion, contact, and physical interaction. We examine hardware, datasets, and benchmarks, and distinguish risks handled locally from those networking introduces, such as stale information or unsafe knowledge propagation. Finally, we identify open problems in control-aware networking, compact body-centric messages, physically grounded coordination, network- and embodiment-aware knowledge sharing, fleet-level social consistency, and accountable human oversight.

Robotics (cs.RO); Emerging Technologies (cs.ET); Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI)

arXiv:2610.34740 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2610.34740v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.34740 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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