Silent Failures in Physical AI: A Literature Review of Runtime Action Authorization for Autonomous Systems</p>\n","updatedAt":"2026-06-02T07:50:34.691Z","author":{"_id":"6a05ebd6a01745697ea77cc0","avatarUrl":"https://cdn-avatars.huggingface.co/v1/production/uploads/6a05ebd6a01745697ea77cc0/GCFxXC7FSR8inb7kSJ8Bc.jpeg","fullname":"Barak Or","name":"barakor","type":"user","isPro":true,"isHf":false,"isHfAdmin":false,"isMod":false,"isUserFollowing":false}},"numEdits":0,"identifiedLanguage":{"language":"en","probability":0.709743082523346},"editors":["barakor"],"editorAvatarUrls":["https://cdn-avatars.huggingface.co/v1/production/uploads/6a05ebd6a01745697ea77cc0/GCFxXC7FSR8inb7kSJ8Bc.jpeg"],"reactions":[],"isReport":false}}],"primaryEmailConfirmed":false,"paper":{"id":"2606.00090","authors":[{"_id":"6a1e8ad2808ddbc3c7d43f6a","name":"Barak Or","hidden":false}],"publishedAt":"2026-05-23T00:00:00.000Z","submittedOnDailyAt":"2026-06-02T00:00:00.000Z","title":"Silent Failures in Physical AI: A Literature Review of Runtime Action Authorization for Autonomous Systems","submittedOnDailyBy":{"_id":"6a05ebd6a01745697ea77cc0","avatarUrl":"https://cdn-avatars.huggingface.co/v1/production/uploads/6a05ebd6a01745697ea77cc0/GCFxXC7FSR8inb7kSJ8Bc.jpeg","isPro":true,"fullname":"Barak Or","user":"barakor","type":"user","name":"barakor"},"summary":"Physical AI systems increasingly map multimodal observations, language instructions, and learned world representations into physically consequential actions. Robotics foundation models, vision-language-action models, and world-model-based autonomous systems can condition decisions that move vehicles, robots, drones, and industrial machines. This transition exposes a safety problem that is not fully captured by conventional AI content moderation or by classical robot safety alone: a black-box model may issue a physically consequential action while appearing confident, plausible, and semantically aligned. The resulting failure can be silent, arising from sensor drift, occlusion, state-estimation error, distribution shift, hallucinated affordances, or invalid physical assumptions before downstream hardware controllers detect a violation.\n Across embodied foundation models, world models, robotics simulation, embodied safety benchmarks, safe control, runtime assurance, uncertainty estimation, verification, and guardrail evaluation, model capability and safety mechanisms have advanced along largely separate technical tracks. A recurring gap synthesized here is that no single stream surveyed in this review supplies a complete runtime authorization boundary between black-box Physical AI models and physical execution. The resulting analysis develops a bounded problem formulation, a definition of silent physical-action failure, a taxonomy of runtime guardrail functions, and evaluation requirements for comparing guardrails as Physical AI assurance mechanisms.","upvotes":1,"discussionId":"6a1e8ad2808ddbc3c7d43f6b","ai_summary":"Physical AI systems face safety challenges where black-box models can execute harmful actions without detection, necessitating comprehensive runtime guardrail mechanisms for safe operation.","ai_keywords":["embodied foundation models","world models","robotics simulation","embodied safety benchmarks","safe control","runtime assurance","uncertainty estimation","verification","guardrail evaluation","physical AI systems","black-box models","silent physical-action failure","runtime guardrail functions"],"organization":{"_id":"6a05ec439bca8dbc65d0aef6","name":"STATE16","fullname":"STATE16","avatar":"https://cdn-avatars.huggingface.co/v1/production/uploads/6a05ebd6a01745697ea77cc0/K2Y4PVuv5MAy14uwy3R8y.jpeg"}},"canReadDatabase":false,"canManagePapers":false,"canSubmit":false,"hasHfLevelAccess":false,"upvoted":false,"upvoters":[{"_id":"6a05ebd6a01745697ea77cc0","avatarUrl":"https://cdn-avatars.huggingface.co/v1/production/uploads/6a05ebd6a01745697ea77cc0/GCFxXC7FSR8inb7kSJ8Bc.jpeg","isPro":true,"fullname":"Barak Or","user":"barakor","type":"user"}],"acceptLanguages":["en"],"dailyPaperRank":0,"organization":{"_id":"6a05ec439bca8dbc65d0aef6","name":"STATE16","fullname":"STATE16","avatar":"https://cdn-avatars.huggingface.co/v1/production/uploads/6a05ebd6a01745697ea77cc0/K2Y4PVuv5MAy14uwy3R8y.jpeg"},"markdownContentUrl":"https://huggingface.co/buckets/huggingchat/papers-content/resolve/2606/2606.00090.md"}">
Silent Failures in Physical AI: A Literature Review of Runtime Action Authorization for Autonomous Systems
Abstract
Physical AI systems face safety challenges where black-box models can execute harmful actions without detection, necessitating comprehensive runtime guardrail mechanisms for safe operation.
AI-generated summary
Physical AI systems increasingly map multimodal observations, language instructions, and learned world representations into physically consequential actions. Robotics foundation models, vision-language-action models, and world-model-based autonomous systems can condition decisions that move vehicles, robots, drones, and industrial machines. This transition exposes a safety problem that is not fully captured by conventional AI content moderation or by classical robot safety alone: a black-box model may issue a physically consequential action while appearing confident, plausible, and semantically aligned. The resulting failure can be silent, arising from sensor drift, occlusion, state-estimation error, distribution shift, hallucinated affordances, or invalid physical assumptions before downstream hardware controllers detect a violation.
Across embodied foundation models, world models, robotics simulation, embodied safety benchmarks, safe control, runtime assurance, uncertainty estimation, verification, and guardrail evaluation, model capability and safety mechanisms have advanced along largely separate technical tracks. A recurring gap synthesized here is that no single stream surveyed in this review supplies a complete runtime authorization boundary between black-box Physical AI models and physical execution. The resulting analysis develops a bounded problem formulation, a definition of silent physical-action failure, a taxonomy of runtime guardrail functions, and evaluation requirements for comparing guardrails as Physical AI assurance mechanisms.
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Silent Failures in Physical AI: A Literature Review of Runtime Action Authorization for Autonomous Systems
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