From Acoustic Sensing to Physical Actions: A Comprehensive Survey of Security Risks in Edge-Deployed Audio LLM-Based Agents

Audio Large Language Models (Audio LLMs) are embedded in agents for smart homes, vehicles, wearables, and embodied systems, where acoustic inputs can propagate from perception into persistent state and consequential execution. This setting extends security analysis beyond model behavior to the system conditions that determine how acoustic inputs can influence agent behavior and external actions. Existing surveys examine acoustic security, LLM-based agents, and edge deployment in isolation, leaving their security interactions in deployed Audio LLM-based agents insufficiently characterized. This survey introduces an Acoustic Sensing-to-Action (S2A) system model that traces these security implications along the path from acoustic sensing to external execution, while accounting for edge-cloud runtime and lifecycle transformation. We use the model to synthesize attacks, defenses, and evaluation methods across the acoustic, agent, and edge-system literature. The synthesis shows that security gaps can emerge within components and at the transitions between stages, where protections developed for one stage do not necessarily provide end-to-end assurance in the deployed system. These findings motivate security evaluation that follows acoustic influence from sensing to action across persistent state, system boundaries, and changing deployment conditions in real-world agents.