@inproceedings{liu-etal-2026-bioproagent,
title = "{B}io{P}ro{A}gent: Neuro-Symbolic Grounding for Constrained Scientific Planning",
author = "Liu, Yuyang and
Wang, Jingya and
Lv, Liuzhenghao and
Tian, Yonghong",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1981/",
pages = "42764--42783",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-390-6",
abstract = "Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated significant reasoning capabilities in scientific discovery but struggle to bridge the gap to physical execution in wet-labs. In these irreversible environments, probabilistic hallucinations are not merely incorrect; they can cause equipment damage or experimental failure. To address this, we propose \textbf{BioProAgent}, a neuro-symbolic framework that anchors probabilistic planning in a deterministic Finite State Machine (FSM). We introduce a State-Augmented Planning mechanism that enforces a rigorous \textit{Design-Verify-Rectify} workflow, ensuring hardware compliance before execution. Furthermore, we address the context bottleneck inherent in complex device schemas by \textit{Semantic Symbol Grounding}, reducing token consumption by $\sim$6$\times$ through symbolic abstraction. In the extended BioProBench benchmark, BioProAgent achieves 95.6{\%} physical compliance (compared to 21.0{\%} for ReAct), demonstrating that neuro-symbolic constraints are essential for reliable autonomy in irreversible physical environments. Code at https://github.com/YuyangSunshine/bioproagent and Website at https://yuyangsunshine.github.io/BioPro-Project/ ."
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T BioProAgent: Neuro-Symbolic Grounding for Constrained Scientific Planning
%A Liu, Yuyang
%A Wang, Jingya
%A Lv, Liuzhenghao
%A Tian, Yonghong
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-390-6
%F liu-etal-2026-bioproagent
%X Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated significant reasoning capabilities in scientific discovery but struggle to bridge the gap to physical execution in wet-labs. In these irreversible environments, probabilistic hallucinations are not merely incorrect; they can cause equipment damage or experimental failure. To address this, we propose BioProAgent, a neuro-symbolic framework that anchors probabilistic planning in a deterministic Finite State Machine (FSM). We introduce a State-Augmented Planning mechanism that enforces a rigorous Design-Verify-Rectify workflow, ensuring hardware compliance before execution. Furthermore, we address the context bottleneck inherent in complex device schemas by Semantic Symbol Grounding, reducing token consumption by \sim6\times through symbolic abstraction. In the extended BioProBench benchmark, BioProAgent achieves 95.6% physical compliance (compared to 21.0% for ReAct), demonstrating that neuro-symbolic constraints are essential for reliable autonomy in irreversible physical environments. Code at https://github.com/YuyangSunshine/bioproagent and Website at https://yuyangsunshine.github.io/BioPro-Project/ .
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1981/
%P 42764-42783
Markdown (Informal)
[BioProAgent: Neuro-Symbolic Grounding for Constrained Scientific Planning](https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.1981/) (Liu et al., ACL 2026)
ACL