Embodied Musical Intelligence: A Systematic Mapping Survey and Symmetry-Aware Synthesis

Music offers a stringent test of embodied intelligence because performance couples precise timing, morphology-dependent sound production, action-conditioned perception and interpersonal coordination. We conducted a systematic mapping survey with a piano-priority mechanism sample. Source screening retained 12,175 version-merged records, thematic screening retained 1944 and task-context screening advanced 831. Abstract and selected-method assessment advanced 241 technically relevant records, from which 96 research papers were selected for full-text coding. We propose three operational tests, a five-axis taxonomy and a separate L0–L4 ladder. The 96 independent full-text coder pairs yielded linear-weighted Cohen’s κ=0.939 for sensorimotor closure and κ=0.958 for embodiment level. Among 62 physical musical papers, 20 reported task-level acoustic feedback, 18 numerical system/component delay and 38 hardware limitation, failure or recovery; none of nine socially interactive physical papers separately quantified both influence directions. These are descriptive reporting frequencies in a purposive piano-priority sample and do not estimate field-wide prevalence. Forty-eight contextual references support definitions and transfer interpretation outside core denominators. The symmetry-aware synthesis separates geometric invariance/equivariance from directional partner influence and morphology-dependent action constraints. It supplies falsifiable propositions and proposed tests, rather than symmetry-coded prevalence results or new robot experiments.