Abstract-- This paper provides a perspective on the literature and current challenges in Multi-Agent Systems for interoperable robot navigation in industry. The focus is on the multiagent decision stack for Autonomous Mobile Robots operating in mixed environments with humans, manually driven vehicles, and legacy Automated Guided Vehicles. We provide typical characteristics of such Multi-Agent Systems observed today and how these are expected to change on the short term due to the new standard VDA5050 and the interoperability framework OpenRMF. Approaches to increase the robustness and performance of multi-robot navigation systems for transportation are discussed, and research opportunities are derived. I. INTRODUCTION Multi-robot navigation encompasses an ever-tighter integration of a vast number of disciplines and research as in most of finalized components to storage locations.

The proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs) has s fueled a shift in robot learning from automation towards general embodied Artificial Intelligence (AI). Adopting foundation models together with traditional learning methods to robot learning has increasingly gained recent interest research community and showed potential for real-life application. However, there are few literatures comprehensively reviewing the relatively new technologies combined with robotics. The purpose of this review is to systematically assess the state-of-the-art foundation model techniques in the robot learning and to identify future potential areas. Specifically, we first summarized the technical evolution of robot learning and identified the necessary preliminary preparations for foundation models including the simulators, datasets, foundation model framework. In addition, we focused on the following four mainstream areas of robot learning including manipulation, navigation, planning, and reasoning and demonstrated how the foundation model techniques can be adopted in the above scenarios. Furthermore, critical issues which are neglected in the current literatures including robot hardware and software decoupling, dynamic data, generalization performance with the presence of human, etc. were discussed. This review highlights the state-of-the-art progress of foundation models in robot learning and future research should focus on multimodal interaction especially dynamics data, exclusive foundation models for robots, and AI alignment, etc.

Deep reinforcement learning suffers from catastrophic forgetting and sample inefficiency making it less applicable to the ever-changing real world. However, the ability to use previously learned knowledge is essential for AI agents to quickly adapt to novelties. Often, certain spatial information observed by the agent in the previous interactions can be leveraged to infer task-specific rules. Inferred rules can then help the agent to avoid potentially dangerous situations in the previously unseen states and guide the learning process increasing agent's novelty adaptation speed. In this work, we propose a general framework that is applicable to deep reinforcement learning agents. Our framework provides the agent with an autonomous way to discover the task-specific rules in the novel environments and self-supervise it's learning. We provide a rule-driven deep Q-learning agent (RDQ) as one possible implementation of that framework. We show that RDQ successfully extracts task-specific rules as it interacts with the world and uses them to drastically increase its learning efficiency. In our experiments, we show that the RDQ agent is significantly more resilient to the novelties than the baseline agents, and is able to detect and adapt to novel situations faster.

Multi-Agent Motion Planning (MAMP) is a problem that seeks collision-free dynamically-feasible trajectories for multiple moving agents in a known environment while minimizing their travel time. MAMP is closely related to the well-studied Multi-Agent Path-Finding (MAPF) problem. Recently, MAPF methods have achieved great success in finding collision-free paths for a substantial number of agents. However, those methods often overlook the kinodynamic constraints of the agents, assuming instantaneous movement, which limits their practicality and realism. In this paper, we present a three-level MAPF-based planner called PSB to address the challenges posed by MAMP. PSB fully considers the kinodynamic capability of the agents and produces solutions with smooth speed profiles that can be directly executed by the controller. Empirically, we evaluate PSB within the domains of traffic intersection coordination for autonomous vehicles and obstacle-rich grid map navigation for mobile robots. PSB shows up to 49.79% improvements in solution cost compared to existing methods.

This paper bridges the gap between mathematical heuristic strategies learned from Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) in automated agent negotiation, and comprehensible, natural language explanations. Our aim is to make these strategies more accessible to non-experts. By leveraging traditional Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and Large Language Models (LLMs) equipped with Transformers, we outline how parts of DRL strategies composed of parts within strategy templates can be transformed into user-friendly, human-like English narratives. To achieve this, we present a top-level algorithm that involves parsing mathematical expressions of strategy templates, semantically interpreting variables and structures, generating rule-based primary explanations, and utilizing a Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) model to refine and contextualize these explanations. Subsequent customization for varied audiences and meticulous validation processes in an example illustrate the applicability and potential of this approach.

Training AI models has always been challenging, especially when there is a need for custom models to provide personalized services. Algorithm engineers often face a lengthy process to iteratively develop models tailored to specific business requirements, making it even more difficult for non-experts. The quest for high-quality and efficient model development, along with the emergence of Large Language Model (LLM) Agents, has become a key focus in the industry. Leveraging the powerful analytical, planning, and decision-making capabilities of LLM, we propose a TrainerAgent system comprising a multi-agent framework including Task, Data, Model and Server agents. These agents analyze user-defined tasks, input data, and requirements (e.g., accuracy, speed), optimizing them comprehensively from both data and model perspectives to obtain satisfactory models, and finally deploy these models as online service. Experimental evaluations on classical discriminative and generative tasks in computer vision and natural language processing domains demonstrate that our system consistently produces models that meet the desired criteria. Furthermore, the system exhibits the ability to critically identify and reject unattainable tasks, such as fantastical scenarios or unethical requests, ensuring robustness and safety. This research presents a significant advancement in achieving desired models with increased efficiency and quality as compared to traditional model development, facilitated by the integration of LLM-powered analysis, decision-making, and execution capabilities, as well as the collaboration among four agents. We anticipate that our work will contribute to the advancement of research on TrainerAgent in both academic and industry communities, potentially establishing it as a new paradigm for model development in the field of AI.

Interest-free promotions are a prevalent strategy employed by credit card lenders to attract new customers, yet the research exploring their effects on both consumers and lenders remains relatively sparse. The process of selecting an optimal promotion strategy is intricate, involving the determination of an interest-free period duration and promotion-availability window, all within the context of competing offers, fluctuating market dynamics, and complex consumer behaviour. In this paper, we introduce an agent-based model that facilitates the exploration of various credit card promotions under diverse market scenarios. Our approach, distinct from previous agent-based models, concentrates on optimising promotion strategies and is calibrated using benchmarks from the UK credit card market from 2019 to 2020, with agent properties derived from historical distributions of the UK population from roughly the same period. We validate our model against stylised facts and time-series data, thereby demonstrating the value of this technique for investigating pricing strategies and understanding credit card customer behaviour. Our experiments reveal that, in the absence of competitor promotions, lender profit is maximised by an interest-free duration of approximately 12 months while market share is maximised by offering the longest duration possible. When competitors do not offer promotions, extended promotion availability windows yield maximum profit for lenders while also maximising market share. In the context of concurrent interest-free promotions, we identify that the optimal lender strategy entails offering a more competitive interest-free period and a rapid response to competing promotional offers. Notably, a delay of three months in responding to a rival promotion corresponds to a 2.4% relative decline in income.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have the potential to significantly revolutionize society by providing a secure and efficient mode of transportation. Recent years have witnessed notable advancements in autonomous driving perception and prediction, but the challenge of validating the performance of AVs remains largely unresolved. Data-driven microscopic traffic simulation has become an important tool for autonomous driving testing due to 1) availability of high-fidelity traffic data; 2) its advantages of enabling large-scale testing and scenario reproducibility; and 3) its potential in reactive and realistic traffic simulation. However, a comprehensive review of this topic is currently lacking. This paper aims to fill this gap by summarizing relevant studies. The primary objective of this paper is to review current research efforts and provide a futuristic perspective that will benefit future developments in the field. It introduces the general issues of data-driven traffic simulation and outlines key concepts and terms. After overviewing traffic simulation, various datasets and evaluation metrics commonly used are reviewed. The paper then offers a comprehensive evaluation of imitation learning, reinforcement learning, deep generative and deep learning methods, summarizing each and analyzing their advantages and disadvantages in detail. Moreover, it evaluates the state-of-the-art, existing challenges, and future research directions.

Developmental psychologists have long-established the importance of socio-cognitive abilities in human intelligence. These abilities enable us to enter, participate and benefit from human culture. AI research on social interactive agents mostly concerns the emergence of culture in a multi-agent setting (often without a strong grounding in developmental psychology). We argue that AI research should be informed by psychology and study socio-cognitive abilities enabling to enter a culture too. We discuss the theories of Michael Tomasello and Jerome Bruner to introduce some of their concepts to AI and outline key concepts and socio-cognitive abilities. We present The SocialAI school - a tool including a customizable parameterized uite of procedurally generated environments, which simplifies conducting experiments regarding those concepts. We show examples of such experiments with RL agents and Large Language Models. The main motivation of this work is to engage the AI community around the problem of social intelligence informed by developmental psychology, and to provide a tool to simplify first steps in this direction. Refer to the project website for code and additional information: https://sites.google.com/view/socialai-school.

In response to anthropogenic climate change, many countries and international organisations have committed to legally binding greenhouse gas emissions targets. The UK and the EU have both recently updated their legislation to include net zero emissions targets in place for 2050 (Skidmore, 2019; Sassoli and Matos Fernandes, 2021). This requires moving away from using fossil fuels for energy generation and moving towards renewable sources such as photovoltaic cells and wind turbines. Centralised'national grids' are able to'switch on and off' traditional fossil fuel power plants in order to increase or decrease the energy supply to meet the demand of the users. As the proportion of energy being generated from renewable sources increases this raises a problem - how can load-balancing (the matching of supply and demand) be managed when the output is inherently dependent on weather conditions. This load-balancing problem is easier to address on a small scale, and as such governments and energy providers are supporting the development of'Community energy systems', where local communities such as a small town own and manage their own renewable energy resources (Walker and Devine-Wright, 2008; Gruber et al., 2021). Decentralised community energy systems allow for a higher share of renewable technologies to be integrated into energy generation (Chiradeja and Ramakumar, 2004); minimise transmission losses between the source of energy generation and the end users (Pepermans et al., 2005); and improve energy security as the energy supply is less impacted by geopolitical factors (Alanne and Saari, 2006). As social awareness of environmental issues increases, the willingness of communities to invest in community energy systems is also expected to increase (Pasimeni, 2019). While there are clear benefits to widespread adoption, the shift towards community energy systems means that comarXiv:2211.10198v2