Zichong Zhu, Zhihao Liu, Andrei Sharf, Zhanglin Cheng
Procedural modeling offers compact, editable, and reusable representations for architectural content, but building such models still depends heavily on manually authored grammars. We study image-based procedural building reconstruction from in-the-wild images, with the goal of recovering an executable procedural description that can be instantiated as an editable 3D building asset. Because a single image provides only partial and view-dependent evidence, we focus on recovering the dominant visible facade(s) and attach the recovered facade program to a simple mass model for building-level instantiation. Our method decomposes this task into two structured prediction stages. First, a Global Structure Layout Tree recovers facade-scale split-and-repeat organization through a fine-tuned layout model with render-guided visual-symbolic reflection. Second, a Component Parameterization schema maps representative facade tiles to structured procedural attributes for local architectural component synthesis. These two representations are then deterministically compiled into executable Computer Generated Architecture (CGA) programs, avoiding the brittleness of direct low-level program generation. Experiments show that the proposed framework handles both regular facades and challenging in-the-wild images, while maintaining high structural consistency, procedural executability, and fine-grained architectural detail. The recovered programs further enable controllable and reusable 3D building asset generation.
Embodied systems can update policies, world models, skills, and executable programs from deployment experience, allowing one interaction to benefit later tasks. When a system also revises and reuses its data-acquisition, feedback, or learning procedures, experience changes the process that produces capability, introducing recursive self-improvement. This paper surveys research in physical AI through the connection between persistent capability and its improvement process. We first explain the functional distinction between learner updates and improvers, then compare policy learning, imagined experience, memory and skill accumulation, and executable harnesses. These approaches connect to revisions of curricula, rewards, and research programs in different ways. Contact validity, recovery, retention, and resource costs determine whether the resulting gains accumulate during continued deployment. An L0-L3 rubric distinguishes task-local adaptation, persistent capability gain, inherited process revision, and verified improver gain. Representative benchmarks and within-study contrasts relate these distinctions to existing results. We further propose common-data and interactive comparisons that evaluate reference and revised improvers from shared learner starts, separating the use of experience from its acquisition. This perspective connects the diverse methods, physical operating conditions, and evaluation evidence, underpinning embodied RSI. A comprehensive list of studies in this survey is available at https://github.com/nkd-lkz/physical-ai-rsi-survey.