ORDER: A Fictitious-World Benchmark for Domain-Adaptive Embodied AI
Organizations: Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India
Abstract
Adapting language models to new domains via continual pre-training raises a basic evaluation problem: if the training corpus overlaps with what the model already knows, performance gains cannot be cleanly attributed to new learning rather than pre-existing knowledge. This matters most for knowledge-intensive, task-light (KHTL) robot deployments - pharmaceutical dispensing, hazardous-material handling, facility-specific protocols, where the physical task is simple but the governing rules are proprietary and safety-critical, and where extensive live testing is costly or unsafe. We introduce ORDER (Ontology-driven Decision-making for Embodied Reasoning), a benchmark built on a fictitious world: a 342,069-token synthetic corpus defining a self-consistent physics that cannot appear in any model's pre-training data. ORDER pairs a 500-question knowledge test (ORDER-BENCH) with a harder compositional task, ORDER-SPATIAL: ordering objects for safe manipulation across both familiar and entirely novel scenes. GPT-4.1 without adaptation scores below chance on ORDER-SPATIAL (Kendall's tau = 0.441), showing its priors actively conflict with the invented physics. After continual pre-training, small models improve substantially on both familiar and novel scenes alike evidence of genuine world-model induction rather than memorization. We then carry this through to a robot pipeline: models that answer the knowledge test well often cannot produce valid, executable plans without a further skill-adaptation stage, after which small, fully offline models outperform GPT-4.1 even when GPT-4.1 is given retrieval access to the same rules (Kendall's tau = 0.848 vs. 0.606), on a full perception-to-execution loop demonstrated on a simulated iiwa7 arm with human-in-the-loop correction. Throughout, ORDER-SPATIAL performance, not knowledge-test accuracy is what predicts real plan quality.
Figures & tables
| Section | Tokens | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Master Ontology (0) | 67,389 | Physics foundation |
| Axioms (1) | 11,886 | Global constraints |
| Counterfactuals (2) | 16,336 | Constraint stress-tests |
| QnA (3) | 47,836 | Format diversification |
| Spatial Configs (4) | 100,214 | Scenes & priority orders |
| Paraphrases (5) | 98,408 | Format diversification |
| Category | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Intrinsic Semantics | 10 | 1.0 | 10.0 |
| QnA | 30 | 1.0 | 30.0 |
| Axioms | 60 | 1.5 | 90.0 |
| Spatial (MCQ) | 72 | 2.0 | 144.0 |
| Pairwise | 150 | 2.5 | 375.0 |
| Counterfactuals | 111 | 2.5 | 277.5 |
| Variant | Description |
|---|---|
| Normal | Packed causal LM over all sections; all-token CLM loss. |
| Overfit | Normal extended to near-zero training loss ( ). |
| DKL * | Base instruct embedding replacement before CPT [ 43 ] . |
| RAFT | Retrieval-augmented fine-tuning with hard-negative distractors [ 44 ] . |
| SSR-CLM | Packed CLM on non-spatial entries; loss-masked SSR (Structured Scene Reasoning) on spatial entries (loss on assistant tokens only, preventing format overfitting). |
| Unified | SSR-CLM RAFT DPO pairs (chosen = oracle-faithful, rejected = parametric-bias) in one training script. |
| Model | PPL | Sp.MCQ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-4.1 | NA | 70.4 | 70.8 |
| M-7B | 13.72 | 48.9 | 65.3 |
| L-8B | 21.79 | 34.7 | 44.4 |
| Q-4B | 24.22 | 57.0 | 69.4 |
| Category | GPT-4.1 | M-7B | L-8B | Q-4B |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Axioms | 100.0 | 96.67 | 98.33 | 98.33 |
| Intrinsic | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
| Pairwise | 100.0 | 98.67 | 96.67 | 98.67 |
| Higher-Order | 100.0 | 100.0 | 97.01 | 100.0 |
| Counterfact. | 98.2 | 93.69 | 90.09 | 96.4 |
| QnA | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
| Mistral-7B (M-7B) | LLaMA-3.1-8B (L-8B) | Qwen3-4B (Q-4B) | ||||||||||
| Seen (70) | Unseen (183) | Seen (70) | Unseen (183) | Seen (70) | Unseen (183) | |||||||
| Variant | par | par | par | par | par | par | ||||||
| GPT-4.1 (reference) | family-independent: , ; , | |||||||||||
| Instruct | 0.528 | 0.368 | 0.509 | 0.347 | 0.513 | 0.366 | 0.554 | 0.345 | 0.582 | 0.394 | 0.597 | 0.412 |
| Normal | 0.49 | 0.38 | 0.55 | 0.36 | 0.51 | 0.36 | 0.54 | 0.35 | 0.64 | 0.44 | 0.65 | 0.44 |
| Overfit | 0.43 | 0.36 | 0.55 | 0.35 | 0.54 | 0.37 | 0.54 | 0.35 | 0.63 | 0.45 | 0.64 | 0.45 |
| Fam. | KI | Instruct | Post-KI | Gain | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M-7B | RAFT | 0.528 | 0.509 | 0.71 | 0.73 | 0.18 | 0.21 |
| L-8B | Unified | 0.513 | 0.554 | 0.77 | 0.81 | 0.26 | 0.26 |
| Q-4B | Combined | 0.582 | 0.597 | 0.79 | 0.74 | 0.21 | 0.14 |
| Family | Variant | svr | sdhr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L-8B | Instruct | 12.2 | 0.057 | 53.4 |
| Normal | 70.7 | 0.524 | 72.4 | |
| RAFT | 31.7 | 0.216 | 87.9 | |
| Unified | 4.9 | 0.037 | 53.4 | |
| M-7B | Instruct | 2.4 | 0.019 | 25.9 |
| Normal | 4.9 | 0.035 | 44.8 |
| Fam. | KI Var. | svr | par | P-PAR | sdhr | |
| L-8B | Inst. S-LoRA | 100.0 | 0.830 | 0.629 | 36 | 100.0 |
| Normal | 100.0 | 0.799 | 0.675 | 43 | 100.0 | |
| Overfit | 100.0 | 0.813 | 0.702 | 46 | 100.0 | |
| DKL | 100.0 | 0.815 | 0.718 | 46 | 100.0 | |
| RAFT | 100.0 | 0.833 | 0.743 | 50 | 100.0 | |
| Unified | 98.8 | 0.848 | 0.724 | 49 | 98.3 |
| Fam. | KI Var. | svr | par | P-PAR | sdhr | |
| L-8B | Normal | 100.0 | 0.781 | 0.649 | 40 | 100.0 |
| Overfit | 100.0 | 0.848 | 0.736 | 46 | 100.0 | |
| DKL | 100.0 | 0.831 | 0.697 | 44 | 96.6 | |
| RAFT | 100.0 | 0.767 | 0.574 | 32 | 98.3 | |
| SSR-CLM | 97.6 | 0.844 | 0.705 | 45 | 91.4 | |
| Unified | 75.6 | 0.601 | 0.497 | 31 | 74.1 |
| Setup | svr | |
|---|---|---|
| Closed-book best (RAFT, Instruct) | 100.0% | 0.833 |
| SLM full assembled context (unadapted) | 0.0% | 0.000 |
| SLM two-stage-cs (adapted) | 100.0% | 0.798 |
| Variant / Mount | Pipeline | svr | par | CB- | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LLaMA-3.1-8B | |||||
| Base-Inst / Inst. | two-stage | 100% | 0.819 | 0.686 | 0.830 |
| Base-Inst / Inst. | two-stage-cs | 100% | 0.798 | 0.663 | 0.830 |
| Overfit / Match. | two-stage | 100% | 0.811 | 0.713 | 0.848 |
| Overfit / Match. | two-stage-cs | 99% | 0.801 | 0.714 | 0.848 |
| 12-Comb. / Match. | two-stage | 100% | 0.824 | 0.719 | 0.806 |
| Fam. | KI / S-LoRA | svr | sdhr | par | P-PAR | ||
| GPT-4.1 Vanilla | 0.44 | 96.3 | 100 | 0.480 | 0.420 | 22 | |
| GPT-4.1 two-stage-cs | - | - | - | 0.606 | - | 10 | |
| LLaMA-3.1-8B - Instruct S-LoRA (closed-book) | |||||||
| L-8B | Unified / Inst. | 0.81 | 98.8 | 98.3 | 0.848 | 0.724 | 49 |
| L-8B | RAFT / Inst. | 0.60 | 100 | 100 | 0.833 | 0.743 | 50 |
| L-8B | DKL / Inst. | 0.58 | 100 | 96.6 | 0.815 | 0.718 | 46 |
Appendix figures & tables12 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| Knowledge Type | Weight | Order |
|---|---|---|
| Counterfactual constraints | 1.00 | 1st |
| Pairwise inter-object (contact) | 0.90 | 2nd |
| Dominance axioms | 0.85 | 3rd |
| Higher-order emergent regimes | 0.80 | 4th |
| Pairwise intra-object | 0.70 | 5th |
| Intrinsic primitive semantics | 0.55 | 6th |
| M-7B | L-8B | Q-4B | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Variant | PPL | Loss | PPL | Loss | PPL | Loss |
| Normal | 3.82 | 0.230 | 7.22 | 0.820 | 8.89 | 1.110 |
| Overfit | 3.10 | 0.021 | 6.04 | 0.016 | 6.79 | 0.059 |
| DKL | 2.07 | 0.027 | 4.72 | 0.015 | 6.06 | 0.085 |
| RAFT | 3.44 | 0.823 | 5.27 | 1.660 | 6.53 | 2.650 |
| SSR-CLM | 1.52 | 0.003 | 2.52 | 0.002 | 4.62 | 0.001 |
| Seen ( ) | Unseen ( ) | ||||
| Metric | Mean | Std | Mean | Std | |
| Structural | |||||
| Num. objects | 3.29 | 0.97 | 3.53 | 0.97 | |
| Unique primitives | 9.53 | 2.06 | 9.63 | 2.47 | |
| Spatial relations | 2.29 | 0.97 | 2.45 | 0.98 | |
| Physics (activation counts) | |||||
| Family | Variant | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M-7B | RAFT | 0.710 | 0.730 | ||
| L-8B | Unified | 0.770 | 0.810 | ||
| Q-4B | Combined | 0.790 | 0.740 | ||
| GPT-4.1 | Vanilla | 0.441 | 0.415 |
| Variant | Intr. | QnA | Axioms | Pair | CFact | HO | Spat. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Normal | 80.0 | 60.0 | 58.3 | 62.0 | 64.0 | 53.7 | 69.4 | 61.8 |
| Overfit | 70.0 | 70.0 | 45.0 | 68.0 | 64.9 | 50.8 | 63.9 | 61.9 |
| DKL | 80.0 | 66.7 | 58.3 | 70.0 | 65.8 | 56.7 | 52.8 | 63.5 |
| RAFT | 70.0 | 36.7 | 25.0 | 54.0 | 36.9 | 41.8 | 44.4 | 43.8 |
| SSR-CLM | 66.7 | 61.7 | 69.3 | 72.1 | 77.6 | 43.1 | 67.7 | |
| Unified | 10.0 | 0.0 | 1.7 | 3.3 | 1.8 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.8 |
| Variant | Intr. | QnA | Axioms | Pair | CFact | HO | Spat. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Normal | 60.0 | 30.0 | 48.3 | 43.3 | 48.7 | 49.3 | 36.1 | 45.0 |
| Overfit | 80.0 | 66.7 | 63.3 | 59.3 | 61.3 | 52.2 | 45.8 | 57.5 |
| DKL | 90.0 | 83.3 | 58.3 | 78.0 | 58.6 | 59.7 | 61.1 | 66.5 |
| RAFT | 80.0 | 33.3 | 40.0 | 42.7 | 52.3 | 46.3 | 55.6 | 47.2 |
| SSR-CLM | 90.0 | 88.3 | 84.0 | 79.3 | 70.1 | 65.3 | 78.6 | |
| Unified | 70.0 | 83.3 | 60.0 | 79.3 | 70.3 | 71.6 | 68.1 | 72.8 |
| Variant | Intr. | QnA | Axioms | Pair | CFact | HO | Spat. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Normal | 80.0 | 73.3 | 83.3 | 74.0 | 52.3 | 55.2 | 73.6 | 66.0 |
| Overfit | 90.0 | 83.3 | 86.7 | 81.3 | 56.8 | 73.1 | 69.4 | 72.9 |
| DKL | 90.0 | 83.3 | 98.3 | 94.0 | 75.7 | 98.5 | 62.5 | 86.3 |
| RAFT | 90.0 | 63.3 | 71.7 | 63.3 | 47.7 | 56.7 | 59.7 | 58.8 |
| SSR-CLM | 83.3 | 94.0 | 78.4 | 95.5 | 70.8 | 87.5 | ||
| Unified | 93.3 | 90.0 | 89.3 | 70.3 | 91.0 | 80.6 | 84.1 |
| Variant | MMLU-Pro | GSM8K | BBH | IFEval |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instruct | 37.5 | 84.4 | 51.0 | 75.0 |
| Normal | 33.8 | 74.5 | 50.6 | 56.8 |
| Overfit | 34.3 | 76.3 | 50.7 | 57.9 |
| DKL | 36.6 | 82.6 | 50.4 | 73.2 |
| RAFT | 36.2 | 83.4 | 50.3 | 74.5 |
| SSR-CLM | 33.1 | 76.2 | 50.6 | 62.3 |
| Variant | MMLU-Pro | GSM8K | BBH | IFEval |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instruct | 30.6 | 51.9 | 44.9 | 47.9 |
| Normal | 26.9 | 52.5 | 43.4 | 44.9 |
| Overfit | 27.2 | 48.9 | 42.6 | 46.8 |
| DKL | 27.6 | 48.3 | 43.1 | 43.8 |
| RAFT | 28.3 | 50.7 | 44.9 | 47.1 |
| SSR-CLM | 25.7 | 33.0 | 41.2 | 38.3 |
| Variant | MMLU-Pro | GSM8K | BBH | IFEval |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instruct | 43.9 | 77.6 | 54.6 | 82.4 |
| Normal | 43.4 | 86.4 | 55.9 | 81.3 |
| Overfit | 43.8 | 82.4 | 54.9 | 79.3 |
| DKL | 38.9 | 74.0 | 50.8 | 79.8 |
| RAFT | 38.6 | 73.6 | 51.4 | 77.2 |
| SSR-CLM | 39.2 | 76.5 | 50.8 | 79.6 |
| Family | Variant | Profile | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| L-8B | Unified ⋆ | best spatial | |||
| L-8B | SSR-CLM | best MCQ | |||
| L-8B | Combined | high risk | |||
| M-7B | RAFT ⋆ | spatial min. forg. | |||
| M-7B | DKL ⋆ | factual spatial | |||
| M-7B | SSR-CLM | MCQ only |
Embodied AI
Embodied AI studies agents that perceive, reason, and act through bodies in physical or simulated environments.
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