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arXiv · 2608.06898

How Should I Pick a Foundation Model for My Robot? In Favor of a Community Evaluation Framework for Social Robots

Eric Nichols·Alva Markelius·Hatice Gunes
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Abstract

Researchers who seek to build social robot applications on foundation models are faced with a difficult question: how should we pick a model? Public leaderboards offer little guidance: the demands of real-time, embodied social interaction lie largely outside their focus. And direct evaluation is impractical at scale: each embodied study requires scarce participant, robot, and experimenter time. In this paper, we identify five evaluation dimensions for foundation models in social robots: (i) conversational competence, (ii) user safety, (iii) embodied character, (iv) target scene effectiveness, and (v) audience appropriateness. To make model selection cheaper and better informed, we propose a three-tiered evaluation funnel paradigm that first filters with general metrics, then extends to simulated interactions, and terminates in more expensive, robot-specific evaluation. We map all five dimensions across all three tiers, chart where applicable evaluation methods exist and are missing, and close with a call to action: let's build the evaluation framework together as a community.

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Eric Nichols, Alva Markelius, Hatice Gunes. 2026-08-07. How Should I Pick a Foundation Model for My Robot? In Favor of a Community Evaluation Framework for Social Robots. https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.06898

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