Survey on Embodied AI for Industry: From the Perspective of Industrial Robots

Abstract Industrial robots underlie modern manufacturing automation, yet conventional deterministic control based on fixed trajectories and offline programming struggles under high-mix and flexible production. Embodied artificial intelligence (EAI) offers a promising alternative by coupling perception, reasoning, and action within closed-loop physical interaction, enabling industrial robots to adapt behaviors online rather than execute predefined tasks. Yet, general-purpose EAI remains difficult to deploy in industrial environments due to stringent requirements on precision, real-time performance, reliability, and safety. These challenges have motivated increasing interest in embodied artificial intelligence for industry (EAI4I). This paper presents a systematic survey of EAI4I from an industrial robotics perspective. Specifically, we first analyze the quantified requirements of industrial robots enabled by EAI4I. Afterwards, recent research progress is reviewed, covering core technologies for single- and multi-robot systems, dedicated hardware platforms, high-fidelity simulators, task-specific datasets, representative industrial application scenarios, and critical deployment challenges. Finally, promising directions toward EAI4I are discussed.