To improve the reasoning and question-answering capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), several multi-agent approaches have been introduced. While these methods enhance performance, the application of collective intelligence-based approaches to complex network structures and the dynamics of agent interactions remain underexplored. This work extends the concept of multi-agent debate to more general network topologies, measuring the question-answering accuracy, influence, consensus, and the effects of bias on the collective. The results show that random networks perform similarly to fully connected networks despite using significantly fewer tokens. Furthermore, a strong consensus among agents correlates with correct answers, whereas divided responses typically indicate incorrect answers. Analysing the influence of the agents reveals a balance between self-reflection and interconnectedness; self-reflection aids when local interactions are incorrect, and local interactions aid when the agent itself is incorrect. Additionally, bias plays a strong role in system performance with correctly biased hub nodes boosting performance. These insights suggest that using random networks or scale-free networks with knowledgeable agents placed in central positions can enhance the overall question-answering performance of multi-agent systems.

In this work, we introduce the Resilient Projected Push-Pull (RP3) algorithm designed for distributed optimization in multi-agent cyber-physical systems with directed communication graphs and the presence of malicious agents. Our algorithm leverages stochastic inter-agent trust values and gradient tracking to achieve geometric convergence rates in expectation even in adversarial environments. We introduce growing constraint sets to limit the impact of the malicious agents without compromising the geometric convergence rate of the algorithm. We prove that RP3 converges to the nominal optimal solution almost surely and in the $r$-th mean for any $r\geq 1$, provided the step sizes are sufficiently small and the constraint sets are appropriately chosen. We validate our approach with numerical studies on average consensus and multi-robot target tracking problems, demonstrating that RP3 effectively mitigates the impact of malicious agents and achieves the desired geometric convergence.

We consider competitive facility location as a two-stage multi-agent system with two types of clients. For a given host graph with weighted clients on the vertices, first facility agents strategically select vertices for opening their facilities. Then, the clients strategically select which of the opened facilities in their neighborhood to patronize. Facilities want to attract as much client weight as possible, clients want to minimize congestion on the chosen facility. All recently studied versions of this model assume that clients can split their weight strategically. We consider clients with unsplittable weights but allow mixed strategies. So clients may randomize over which facility to patronize. Besides modeling a natural client behavior, this subtle change yields drastic changes, e.g., for a given facility placement, qualitatively different client equilibria are possible. As our main result, we show that pure subgame perfect equilibria always exist if all client weights are identical. For this, we use a novel potential function argument, employing a hierarchical classification of the clients and sophisticated rounding in each step. In contrast, for non-identical clients, we show that deciding the existence of even approximately stable states is computationally intractable. On the positive side, we give a tight bound of $2$ on the price of anarchy which implies high social welfare of equilibria, if they exist.

With recent developments in Embodied Artificial Intelligence (EAI) research, there has been a growing demand for high-quality, large-scale interactive scene generation. While prior methods in scene synthesis have prioritized the naturalness and realism of the generated scenes, the physical plausibility and interactivity of scenes have been largely left unexplored. To address this disparity, we introduce PhyScene, a novel method dedicated to generating interactive 3D scenes characterized by realistic layouts, articulated objects, and rich physical interactivity tailored for embodied agents. Based on a conditional diffusion model for capturing scene layouts, we devise novel physics- and interactivity-based guidance mechanisms that integrate constraints from object collision, room layout, and object reachability. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that PhyScene effectively leverages these guidance functions for physically interactable scene synthesis, outperforming existing state-of-the-art scene synthesis methods by a large margin. Our findings suggest that the scenes generated by PhyScene hold considerable potential for facilitating diverse skill acquisition among agents within interactive environments, thereby catalyzing further advancements in embodied AI research. Project website: http://physcene.github.io.

In domain-specific applications, GPT-4, augmented with precise prompts or Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), shows notable potential but faces the critical tri-lemma of performance, cost, and data privacy. High performance requires sophisticated processing techniques, yet managing multiple agents within a complex workflow often proves costly and challenging. To address this, we introduce the PEER (Plan, Execute, Express, Review) multi-agent framework. This systematizes domain-specific tasks by integrating precise question decomposition, advanced information retrieval, comprehensive summarization, and rigorous self-assessment. Given the concerns of cost and data privacy, enterprises are shifting from proprietary models like GPT-4 to custom models, striking a balance between cost, security, and performance. We developed industrial practices leveraging online data and user feedback for efficient model tuning. This study provides best practice guidelines for applying multi-agent systems in domain-specific problem-solving and implementing effective agent tuning strategies. Our empirical studies, particularly in the financial question-answering domain, demonstrate that our approach achieves 95.0% of GPT-4's performance, while effectively managing costs and ensuring data privacy.

Diplomacy is one of the most sophisticated activities in human society. The complex interactions among multiple parties/ agents involve various abilities like social reasoning, negotiation arts, and long-term strategy planning. Previous AI agents surely have proved their capability of handling multi-step games and larger action spaces on tasks involving multiple agents. However, diplomacy involves a staggering magnitude of decision spaces, especially considering the negotiation stage required. Recently, LLM agents have shown their potential for extending the boundary of previous agents on a couple of applications, however, it is still not enough to handle a very long planning period in a complex multi-agent environment. Empowered with cutting-edge LLM technology, we make the first stab to explore AI's upper bound towards a human-like agent for such a highly comprehensive multi-agent mission by combining three core and essential capabilities for stronger LLM-based societal agents: 1) strategic planner with memory and reflection; 2) goal-oriented negotiate with social reasoning; 3) augmenting memory by self-play games to self-evolving without any human in the loop.

For robots to interact socially, they must interpret human intentions and anticipate their potential outcomes accurately. This is particularly important for social robots designed for human care, which may face potentially dangerous situations for people, such as unseen obstacles in their way, that should be avoided. This paper explores the Artificial Theory of Mind (ATM) approach to inferring and interpreting human intentions. We propose an algorithm that detects risky situations for humans, selecting a robot action that removes the danger in real time. We use the simulation-based approach to ATM and adopt the 'like-me' policy to assign intentions and actions to people. Using this strategy, the robot can detect and act with a high rate of success under time-constrained situations. The algorithm has been implemented as part of an existing robotics cognitive architecture and tested in simulation scenarios. Three experiments have been conducted to test the implementation's robustness, precision and real-time response, including a simulated scenario, a human-in-the-loop hybrid configuration and a real-world scenario.

Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) has gained increasing attention over recent years and many approaches have emerged to advance their development. The remarkable achievements of foundation models have shaped the challenges and proposed methods for VLN research. In this survey, we provide a top-down review that adopts a principled framework for embodied planning and reasoning, and emphasizes the current methods and future opportunities leveraging foundation models to address VLN challenges. We hope our in-depth discussions could provide valuable resources and insights: on one hand, to milestone the progress and explore opportunities and potential roles for foundation models in this field, and on the other, to organize different challenges and solutions in VLN to foundation model researchers.

Prior research has enhanced the ability of Large Language Models (LLMs) to solve logic puzzles using techniques such as chain-of-thought prompting or introducing a symbolic representation. These frameworks are still usually insufficient to solve complicated logical problems, such as Zebra puzzles, due to the inherent complexity of translating natural language clues into logical statements. We introduce a multi-agent system, ZPS, that integrates LLMs with an off the shelf theorem prover. This system tackles the complex puzzle-solving task by breaking down the problem into smaller, manageable parts, generating SMT (Satisfiability Modulo Theories) code to solve them with a theorem prover, and using feedback between the agents to repeatedly improve their answers. We also introduce an automated grid puzzle grader to assess the correctness of our puzzle solutions and show that the automated grader is reliable by evaluating it in a user-study. Our approach shows improvement in all three LLMs we tested, with GPT-4 showing 166% improvement in the number of fully correct solutions.

Safety assurance is critical in the planning and control of robotic systems. For robots operating in the real world, the safety-critical design often needs to explicitly address uncertainties and the pre-computed guarantees often rely on the assumption of the particular distribution of the uncertainty. However, it is difficult to characterize the actual uncertainty distribution beforehand and thus the established safety guarantee may be violated due to possible distribution mismatch. In this paper, we propose a novel safe control framework that provides a high-probability safety guarantee for stochastic dynamical systems following unknown distributions of motion noise. Specifically, this framework adopts adaptive conformal prediction to dynamically quantify the prediction uncertainty from online observations and combines that with the probabilistic extension of the control barrier functions (CBFs) to characterize the uncertainty-aware control constraints. By integrating the constraints in the model predictive control scheme, it allows robots to adaptively capture the true prediction uncertainty online in a distribution-free setting and enjoys formally provable high-probability safety assurance. Simulation results on multi-robot systems with stochastic single-integrator dynamics and unicycle dynamics are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework.