Two-Rate Cloud-Brain / Edge-Controller Split

Problem

A single model cannot be both the deliberate planner and the real-time motor loop. If the high-rate controller waits for each new plan from the slow planner, its effective rate collapses to the planner's inference speed and the body falls out of balance or overshoots its target. If the slow planner is forced to run fast enough for control, it must shrink until it can no longer reason about the scene or the instruction. The agent needs deliberation and real-time actuation at the same time on the same body.

Solution

Separate the agent into two loops that run on two clocks and communicate through a small shared latent. The slow planner — a large model, often off-board — reads the instruction and recent observations and emits a compact latent plan or goal at low frequency, for example a few hertz. The fast controller — a small model on the robot — takes that latent plan plus the latest proprioception and sensor readings and produces motor commands at the native control rate, for example fifty to a hundred hertz. The fast loop never waits for the slow loop: it reads whichever latent plan is currently posted and keeps tracking it, and the slow loop overwrites that plan asynchronously whenever its next inference finishes. The interface between them is the latent plan, so the planner can be retrained or moved across the link without changing the controller's deadline.

When to use

• An agent controls a physical body that needs motor commands at a fixed high rate to stay stable.
• The model that understands the scene and instruction is too slow to run inside one control period.
• The large model can run off-board while only a small controller fits on the device.
• A compact latent plan can carry intent from the slow loop to the fast loop.