Embodied.cpp: A Portable Inference Runtime of Embodied AI Models on Heterogeneous Robots

Abstract

Embodied AI models now span vision-language-action (VLA) models and world-action models (WAMs), but practical deployment remains fragmented across model-specific Python stacks, backend assumptions, and robot-side glue code, especially on heterogeneous edge devices. Existing inference runtimes are designed mainly for request-response serving and therefore do not satisfy the runtime contract of embodied deployment: multi-rate execution inside closed-loop control, latency-first batch-1 inference on heterogeneous hardware, and extensible embodied interfaces beyond fixed token I/O. We present Embodied$.$cpp, a portable C++ inference runtime for embodied models. Based on an architectural analysis of representative VLA models and WAMs, Embodied$.$cpp captures a shared execution path and organizes it into five layers: input adapters, sequence builders, backbone execution, head plugins, and deployment adapters. The runtime provides modular multi-rate execution, latency-first fused inference, and extensible operator and I/O support, enabling deployment across heterogeneous devices, robots, and simulators through one backend abstraction. We evaluate Embodied$.$cpp on three VLA and two WAM models, using normalized comparisons across Python and C++ quantization configurations. Overall, Embodied$.$cpp achieves 1.05x-2.70x inference speedups and 7\%-77\% lower VRAM relative to Python baselines, while maintaining near-baseline success for most configurations. These results show that Embodied$.$cpp improves deployment efficiency while preserving high control quality across diverse embodied model architectures. Project Link: https://github.com/SEU-PAISys/Embodied.cpp