Giulia D’Angelo, Jens E. Pedersen, Taimoor Hassan, Matteo Cianchetti, Josh Bongard, Fumiya Iida, Giacomo Indiveri, Matej Hoffmann, Cecilia Laschi, Chiara De Luca, Chiara Bartolozzi & Elisa Donati. A benchmarking framework for embodied neuromorphic agents.  Nature Machine Intelligence, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-026-01197-w

Abstract

“Enabling robots to swiftly, robustly and efficiently interact with a dynamic environment remains a key challenge. The robotic community can draw inspiration from the co-adaptation and synergistic interplay between animals’ brains and bodies, which underpins embodied intelligence. Soft robots and neuromorphic technology offer a natural solution for such a challenge, enabling low-power, material-based and event-driven sensorimotor processing and control that seamlessly handles the continuous dynamic demands of embodied agents. In this Perspective, we propose a comprehensive framework for benchmarking neuromorphic computing (brain) that control soft robots (body), based on a suite of tasks, essential metrics and a reproducible robotic platform. The goal is to allow researchers to evaluate their embodied neuromorphic system with a physical robot, in real-world scenarios. The robotic platform is accessible, open-source, modular and scalable, so task complexity can be gradually increased, fostering a standardized approach. By coupling metrics with physical implementations, this framework will drive progress in soft robotics, neuromorphic computing and embodied intelligence.”

Giulia D’Angelo, Jens E. Pedersen, Taimoor Hassan, Matteo Cianchetti, Josh Bongard, Fumiya Iida, Giacomo Indiveri, Matej Hoffmann, Cecilia Laschi, Chiara De Luca, Chiara Bartolozzi & Elisa Donati. A benchmarking framework for embodied neuromorphic agents.  Nature Machine Intelligence, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-026-01197-w