LAB / WMSI-EXP-051
Embodied Multi-Agent Coordination.
Do embodied agents develop roles, communication norms, or hierarchy in shared space?
01 / QUESTION
Robotics and Embodied AI
Do embodied agents develop roles, communication norms, or hierarchy in shared space?
This is a protocol scaffold, not a completed experiment or a frozen execution plan. No measured effect or research conclusion is claimed here.
Hypothesis to test
The manipulation described below produces a reproducible, condition-specific change in the measured system behavior or internal state that is not explained by the ordinary controls.
Ordinary competing explanation
The observed pattern is explained by ordinary sampling variation, prompt/representation artifacts, surface lexical cues, evaluator bias, or the known product/runtime mechanics captured by the controls.
02 / PLANNED DESIGN
How we intend to test it
Run cooperative physical/simulated tasks with symmetric agents and persistent interaction.
Controls
Centralized planner; no-communication condition.
What we would measure
Role specialization, collisions, throughput, communication entropy.
Access and instruments
Physical audio or robotics equipment. This describes access requirements, not verified readiness on our Spark.
Multi-agent simulator/robots; telemetry.
Before a full run
Feasibility=HARDWARE; priority=P2. Before confirmatory execution, run a small pilot to estimate variance/cost, freeze the scoring rules, and assign a run-count target.
Model revisions, final prompts, sample sizes, cost limits, and scoring rules must be settled through the pilot and protocol-freeze process.
03 / INTERPRETATION
What could fool us
Sim/real mismatch, sensor drift, uncontrolled physical environment.
What would weaken the idea
If apparent roles vanish under randomization and do not improve performance, emergence is weak.
Observation, inference, speculation, unknowns, and apparatus errors will be labeled separately. One striking transcript cannot establish a general effect.
04 / RECORD
Evidence we plan to preserve
Simulation seed, robot telemetry, video, action log, safety stops, environment state.
Planned visual evidence
Spatial trajectories; communication network.
No research runs or raw datasets are published for this experiment. The September 26, 2026 registry and protocol compendium (version 1.0) are the sources for this planning record.
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