English

Perceptual Self-Reflection in Agentic Physics Simulation Code Generation

Software Engineering 2026-02-16 v1 Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

We present a multi-agent framework for generating physics simulation code from natural language descriptions, featuring a novel perceptual self-reflection mechanism for validation. The system employs four specialized agents: a natural language interpreter that converts user requests into physics-based descriptions; a technical requirements generator that produces scaled simulation parameters; a physics code generator with automated self-correction; and a physics validator that implements perceptual self-reflection. The key innovation is perceptual validation, which analyzes rendered animation frames using a vision-capable language model rather than inspecting code structure directly. This approach addresses the ``oracle gap'' where syntactically correct code produces physically incorrect behavior--a limitation that conventional testing cannot detect. We evaluate the system across seven domains including classical mechanics, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, electromagnetics, wave physics, reaction-diffusion systems, and non-physics data visualization. The perceptual self-reflection architecture demonstrates substantial improvement over single-shot generation baselines, with the majority of tested scenarios achieving target physics accuracy thresholds. The system exhibits robust pipeline stability with consistent code self-correction capability, operating at approximately $0.20 per animation. These results validate our hypothesis that feeding visual simulation outputs back to a vision-language model for iterative refinement significantly outperforms single-shot code generation for physics simulation tasks and highlights the potential of agentic AI to support engineering workflows and physics data generation pipelines.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.12311,
  title  = {Perceptual Self-Reflection in Agentic Physics Simulation Code Generation},
  author = {Prashant Shende and Bradley Camburn},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.12311},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

15 pages, 2 figures, 2 tables. Introduces a multi-agent architecture for physics simulation code generation with perceptual self-reflection via vision-based validation. Includes qualitative evaluation across multiple physics domains

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:34:20.235Z