This paper looks at predictability problems, i.e., wherein an agent must choose its strategy in order to optimize the predictions that an external observer could make. We address these problems while taking into account uncertainties on the environment dynamics and on the observed agent's policy. To that end, we assume that the observer 1. seeks to predict the agent's future action or state at each time step, and 2. models the agent using a stochastic policy computed from a known underlying problem, and we leverage on the framework of observer-aware Markov decision processes (OAMDPs). We propose action and state predictability performance criteria through reward functions built on the observer's belief about the agent policy; show that these induced predictable OAMDPs can be represented by goal-oriented or discounted MDPs; and analyze the properties of the proposed reward functions both theoretically and empirically on two types of grid-world problems.

We propose an intuitive LLM prompting framework (AgentKit) for multifunctional agents. AgentKit offers a unified framework for explicitly constructing a complex "thought process" from simple natural language prompts. The basic building block in AgentKit is a node, containing a natural language prompt for a specific subtask. The user then puts together chains of nodes, like stacking LEGO pieces. The chains of nodes can be designed to explicitly enforce a naturally structured "thought process". For example, for the task of writing a paper, one may start with the thought process of 1) identify a core message, 2) identify prior research gaps, etc. The nodes in AgentKit can be designed and combined in different ways to implement multiple advanced capabilities including on-the-fly hierarchical planning, reflection, and learning from interactions. In addition, due to the modular nature and the intuitive design to simulate explicit human thought process, a basic agent could be implemented as simple as a list of prompts for the subtasks and therefore could be designed and tuned by someone without any programming experience. Quantitatively, we show that agents designed through AgentKit achieve SOTA performance on WebShop and Crafter. These advances underscore AgentKit's potential in making LLM agents effective and accessible for a wider range of applications. https://github.com/holmeswww/AgentKit

Since the launch of ChatGPT, many of the first wave of generative AI applications have been a variation of a chat over a corpus of documents using the Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) pattern. While there is a lot of activity in making RAG systems more robust, various groups are starting to build what the next generation of AI applications will look like, centralizing on a common theme: agents. Beginning with investigations into recent foundation models like GPT-4 and popularized through open-source projects like AutoGPT and BabyAGI, the research community has experimented with building autonomous agent-based systems [19, 1]. As opposed to zero-shot prompting of a large language model where a user types into an open-ended text field and gets a result without additional input, agents allow for more complex interaction and orchestration. In particular, agentic systems have a notion of planning, loops, reflection and other control structures that heavily leverage the model's inherent reasoning capabilities to accomplish a task end-to-end. Paired with the ability to use tools, plugins, and function calling, agents are empowered to do more general-purpose work. Among the community, there is a current debate on whether single or multi-agent systems are best suited for solving complex tasks.

This paper considers the problem of conflict-free distribution of agents on a circular periphery encompassing all agents. The two key elements of the proposed policy include the construction of a set of convex layers (nested convex polygons) using the initial positions of the agents, and a novel search space region for each of the agents. The search space for an agent on a convex layer is defined as the region enclosed between the lines passing through the agent's position and normal to its supporting edges. Guaranteeing collision-free paths, a goal assignment policy designates a unique goal position within the search space of an agent. In contrast to the existing literature, this work presents a one-shot, collision-free solution to the circular distribution problem by utilizing only the initial positions of the agents. Illustrative examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed policy.

Multi-object transport using multi-robot systems has the potential for diverse practical applications such as delivery services owing to its efficient individual and scalable cooperative transport. However, allocating transportation tasks of objects with unknown weights remains challenging. Moreover, the presence of infeasible tasks (untransportable objects) can lead to robot stoppage (deadlock). This paper proposes a framework for dynamic task allocation that involves storing task experiences for each task in a scalable manner with respect to the number of robots. First, these experiences are broadcasted from the cloud server to the entire robot system. Subsequently, each robot learns the exclusion levels for each task based on those task experiences, enabling it to exclude infeasible tasks and reset its task priorities. Finally, individual transportation, cooperative transportation, and the temporary exclusion of tasks considered infeasible are achieved. The scalability and versatility of the proposed method were confirmed through numerical experiments with an increased number of robots and objects, including unlearned weight objects. The effectiveness of the temporary deadlock avoidance was also confirmed by introducing additional robots within an episode. The proposed method enables the implementation of task allocation strategies that are feasible for different numbers of robots and various transport tasks without prior consideration of feasibility.

Wargames are a powerful tool for understanding and rehearsing real-world decision making. Automated play of wargames using artificial intelligence (AI) enables possibilities beyond those of human-conducted games, such as playing the game many times over to see a range of possible outcomes. There are two categories of wargames: quantitative games, with discrete types of moves, and qualitative games, which revolve around open-ended responses. Historically, automation efforts have focused on quantitative games, but large language models (LLMs) make it possible to automate qualitative wargames. We introduce "Snow Globe," an LLM-powered multi-agent system for playing qualitative wargames. With Snow Globe, every stage of a text-based qualitative wargame from scenario preparation to post-game analysis can be optionally carried out by AI, humans, or a combination thereof. We describe its software architecture conceptually and release an open-source implementation alongside this publication. As case studies, we simulate a tabletop exercise about an AI incident response and a political wargame about a geopolitical crisis. We discuss potential applications of the approach and how it fits into the broader wargaming ecosystem.

The success of collaboration between humans and robots in shared environments relies on the robot's real-time adaptation to human motion. Specifically, in Social Navigation, the agent should be close enough to assist but ready to back up to let the human move freely, avoiding collisions. Human trajectories emerge as crucial cues in Social Navigation, but they are partially observable from the robot's egocentric view and computationally complex to process. We propose the first Social Dynamics Adaptation model (SDA) based on the robot's state-action history to infer the social dynamics. We propose a two-stage Reinforcement Learning framework: the first learns to encode the human trajectories into social dynamics and learns a motion policy conditioned on this encoded information, the current status, and the previous action. Here, the trajectories are fully visible, i.e., assumed as privileged information. In the second stage, the trained policy operates without direct access to trajectories. Instead, the model infers the social dynamics solely from the history of previous actions and statuses in real-time. Tested on the novel Habitat 3.0 platform, SDA sets a novel state of the art (SoA) performance in finding and following humans.

Unmanned boats, while navigating at sea, utilize active compensation systems to mitigate wave disturbances experienced by onboard instruments and equipment. However, there exists a lag in the measurement of unmanned boat attitudes, thus introducing unmanned boat motion attitude prediction to compensate for the lag in the signal acquisition process. This paper, based on the basic principles of waves, derives the disturbance patterns of waves on unmanned boats from the wave energy spectrum. Through simulation analysis of unmanned boat motion attitudes, motion attitude data is obtained, providing experimental data for subsequent work. A combined prediction model based on Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise (CEEMDAN), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and Support Vector Machine (SVM) is designed to predict the motion attitude of unmanned boats. Simulation results validate its superior prediction accuracy compared to traditional prediction models. For example, in terms of mean absolute error, it improves by 17% compared to the EMD-PSO-SVM model.

Building embodied AI systems that can follow arbitrary language instructions in any 3D environment is a key challenge for creating general AI. Accomplishing this goal requires learning to ground language in perception and embodied actions, in order to accomplish complex tasks. The Scalable, Instructable, Multiworld Agent (SIMA) project tackles this by training agents to follow free-form instructions across a diverse range of virtual 3D environments, including curated research environments as well as open-ended, commercial video games. Our goal is to develop an instructable agent that can accomplish anything a human can do in any simulated 3D environment. Our approach focuses on language-driven generality while imposing minimal assumptions. Our agents interact with environments in real-time using a generic, human-like interface: the inputs are image observations and language instructions and the outputs are keyboard-and-mouse actions. This general approach is challenging, but it allows agents to ground language across many visually complex and semantically rich environments while also allowing us to readily run agents in new environments. In this paper we describe our motivation and goal, the initial progress we have made, and promising preliminary results on several diverse research environments and a variety of commercial video games.

Autonomous vessels have emerged as a prominent and accepted solution, particularly in the naval defence sector. However, achieving full autonomy for marine vessels demands the development of robust and reliable control and guidance systems that can handle various encounters with manned and unmanned vessels while operating effectively under diverse weather and sea conditions. A significant challenge in this pursuit is ensuring the autonomous vessels' compliance with the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs). These regulations present a formidable hurdle for the human-level understanding by autonomous systems as they were originally designed from common navigation practices created since the mid-19th century. Their ambiguous language assumes experienced sailors' interpretation and execution, and therefore demands a high-level (cognitive) understanding of language and agent intentions. These capabilities surpass the current state-of-the-art in intelligent systems. This position paper highlights the critical requirements for a trustworthy control and guidance system, exploring the complexity of adapting COLREGs for safe vessel-on-vessel encounters considering autonomous maritime technology competing and/or cooperating with manned vessels.