We introduce PhysicalAgent, an agentic framework for robotic manipulation that integrates iterative reasoning, diffusion-based video generation, and closed-loop execution. Given a textual instruction, our method generates short video demonstrations of candidate trajectories, executes them on the robot, and iteratively re-plans in response to failures. This approach enables robust recovery from execution errors. We evaluate PhysicalAgent across multiple perceptual modalities (egocentric, third-person, and simulated) and robotic embodiments (bimanual UR3, Unitree G1 humanoid, simulated GR1), comparing against state-of-the-art task-specific baselines. Experiments demonstrate that our method consistently outperforms prior approaches, achieving up to 83% success on human-familiar tasks. Physical trials reveal that first-attempt success is limited (20-30%), yet iterative correction increases overall success to 80% across platforms. These results highlight the potential of video-based generative reasoning for general-purpose robotic manipulation and underscore the importance of iterative execution for recovering from initial failures. Our framework paves the way for scalable, adaptable, and robust robot control.
@article{arxiv.2509.13903,
title = {PhysicalAgent: Towards General Cognitive Robotics with Foundation World Models},
author = {Artem Lykov and Jeffrin Sam and Hung Khang Nguyen and Vladislav Kozlovskiy and Yara Mahmoud and Valerii Serpiva and Miguel Altamirano Cabrera and Mikhail Konenkov and Dzmitry Tsetserukou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.13903},
year = {2025}
}