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Pre-Execution Safety Gate & Task Safety Contracts for LLM-Controlled Robot Systems

Authors: Ike Obi, Vishnunandan L. N. Venkatesh, Weizheng Wang, Ruiqi Wang, Dayoon Suh, Temitope I. Amosa, Wonse Jo, Byung-Cheol Min

Published: 2026-04-07

arXiv ID: 2604.05427v1

Added to Library: 2026-04-08 02:03 UTC

Safety

📄 Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used to convert task commands into robot-executable code, however this pipeline lacks validation gates to detect unsafe and defective commands before they are translated into robot code. Furthermore, even commands that appear safe at the outset can produce unsafe state transitions during execution in the absence of continuous constraint monitoring. In this research, we introduce SafeGate, a neurosymbolic safety architecture that prevents unsafe natural language task commands from reaching robot execution. Drawing from ISO 13482 safety standard, SafeGate extracts structured safety-relevant properties from natural language commands and applies a deterministic decision gate to authorize or reject execution. In addition, we introduce Task Safety Contracts, which decomposes commands that pass through the gate into invariants, guards, and abort conditions to prevent unsafe state transitions during execution. We further incorporate Z3 SMT solving to enforce constraint checking derived from the Task Safety Contracts. We evaluate SafeGate against existing LLM-based robot safety frameworks and baseline LLMs across 230 benchmark tasks, 30 AI2-THOR simulation scenarios, and real-world robot experiments. Results show that SafeGate significantly reduces the acceptance of defective commands while maintaining a high acceptance of benign tasks, demonstrating the importance of pre-execution safety gates for LLM-controlled robot systems

🔍 Key Points

  • Introduction of SafeGate, a neurosymbolic pre-execution safety architecture, that validates task commands for LLM-controlled robots, thereby preventing unsafe commands from executing.
  • Development of Task Safety Contracts that decompose authorized commands into structured safety criteria including invariants, guards, and abort conditions for runtime monitoring.
  • Comprehensive evaluation of SafeGate against existing safety frameworks and baseline LLMs across varied tasks and real-world scenarios, demonstrating significant improvement in safety metrics.
  • Benchmark experiments reveal SafeGate's ability to maintain a high acceptance rate of benign tasks without compromising safety, outperforming other frameworks in avoiding the execution of unsafe commands.

💡 Why This Paper Matters

The paper presents a critical advancement in the safety of LLM-controlled robot systems by integrating a unique validation mechanism that actively prevents unsafe commands from being executed. SafeGate not only enhances operational safety but also delivers high functional performance, making it a vital contribution to the field of robotic safety. This makes it relevant for both academic and practical implementations in robotics.

🎯 Why It's Interesting for AI Security Researchers

This paper is highly relevant to AI security researchers as it addresses the significant challenges of safety in AI-driven robotics. By providing a robust framework for pre-execution safety evaluation, it highlights methods for detecting and handling potentially hazardous commands, a critical need in ensuring safe AI applications in real-world environments. Understanding and mitigating risks associated with LLMs in robotics is essential for developing reliable and secure AI systems.

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