Abstract
Metamaterials have revolutionized wave control; in the last two decades, they evolved from passive devices via programmable devices to sensor-endowed self-adaptive devices realizing a user-specified functionality. Although deep-learning techniques play an increasingly important role in metamaterial inverse design, measurement post-processing and end-to-end optimization, their role is ultimately still limited to approximating specific mathematical relations; the metamaterial is still limited to serving as proxy of a human operator, realizing a predefined functionality. Here, we propose and experimentally prototype a paradigm shift toward a metamaterial agent (coined metaAgent) endowed with reasoning and cognitive capabilities enabling the autonomous planning and successful execution of diverse long-horizon tasks, including electromagnetic (EM) field manipulations and interactions with robots and humans. Leveraging recently released foundation models, metaAgent reasons in high-level natural language, acting upon diverse prompts from an evolving complex environment. Specifically, metaAgent's cerebrum performs high-level task planning in natural language via a multi-agent discussion mechanism, where agents are domain experts in sensing, planning, grounding, and coding. In response to live environmental feedback within a real-world setting emulating an ambient-assisted living context (including human requests in natural language), our metaAgent prototype self-organizes a hierarchy of EM manipulation tasks in conjunction with commanding a robot. metaAgent masters foundational EM manipulation skills related to wireless communications and sensing, and it memorizes and learns from past experience based on human feedback.