Unity Best Practices for Physics + AI

Hello!
I am trying to make an AI game similar to SA2 Chao Garden and other games like Pikmin where I want to make AI that have physics of some sort.

I know the ML-Agents/Navmesh system seem to conflict with how I would like to do things and the rigidbodys seem finicky at times + don’t work to well with these systems.

What would be the best approach for AI and a physics system in one game? Should I be coding my own systems, or at-least coding the AI and using rigidbodies as to not reinvent the wheel?

The NavMeshAgent has a property called “desiredVelocity” : Unity - Scripting API: NavMeshAgent
You could read from this value and then apply physical forces in order to move the body based on it.