[2603.00117] PEPA: a Persistently Autonomous Embodied Agent with Personalities

Computer Science > Robotics arXiv:2603.00117 (cs) [Submitted on 21 Feb 2026] Title:PEPA: a Persistently Autonomous Embodied Agent with Personalities Authors:Kaige Liu, Yang Li, Lijun Zhu, Weinan Zhang View a PDF of the paper titled PEPA: a Persistently Autonomous Embodied Agent with Personalities, by Kaige Liu and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Living organisms exhibit persistent autonomy through internally generated goals and self-sustaining behavioral organization, yet current embodied agents remain driven by externally scripted objectives. This dependence on predefined task specifications limits their capacity for long-term deployment in dynamic, unstructured environments where continuous human intervention is impractical. We propose that personality traits provide an intrinsic organizational principle for achieving persistent autonomy. Analogous to genotypic biases shaping biological behavioral tendencies, personalities enable agents to autonomously generate goals and sustain behavioral evolution without external supervision. To realize this, we develop PEPA, a three-layer cognitive architecture that operates through three interacting systems: Sys3 autonomously synthesizes personality-aligned goals and refines them via episodic memory and daily self-reflection; Sys2 performs deliberative reasoning to translate goals into executable action plans; Sys1 grounds the agent in sensorimotor interaction, executing actions and recording experiences. We va...