Agents
Remembering the Markov Property in Cooperative MARL
Tessera, Kale-ab Abebe, Hinckeldey, Leonard, Zamboni, Riccardo, Abel, David, Storkey, Amos
Cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) is typically formalised as a Decentralised Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (Dec-POMDP), where agents must reason about the environment and other agents' behaviour. In practice, current model-free MARL algorithms use simple recurrent function approximators to address the challenge of reasoning about others using partial information. In this position paper, we argue that the empirical success of these methods is not due to effective Markov signal recovery, but rather to learning simple conventions that bypass environment observations and memory. Through a targeted case study, we show that co-adapting agents can learn brittle conventions, which then fail when partnered with non-adaptive agents. Crucially, the same models can learn grounded policies when the task design necessitates it, revealing that the issue is not a fundamental limitation of the learning models but a failure of the benchmark design. Our analysis also suggests that modern MARL environments may not adequately test the core assumptions of Dec-POMDPs. We therefore advocate for new cooperative environments built upon two core principles: (1) behaviours grounded in observations and (2) memory-based reasoning about other agents, ensuring success requires genuine skill rather than fragile, co-adapted agreements.
Designing Value-Aligned Traffic Agents through Conflict Sensitivity
Rakow, Astrid, Collenette, Joe, Schwammberger, Maike, Slavkovik, Marija, Alves, Gleifer Vs
Autonomous traffic agents (ATAs) are expected to act in ways tat are not only safe, but also aligned with stakeholder values across legal, social, and moral dimensions. In this paper, we adopt an established formal model of conflict from epistemic game theory to support the development of such agents. We focus on value conflicts-situations in which agents face competing goals rooted in value-laden situations and show how conflict analysis can inform key phases of the design process. This includes value elicitation, capability specification, explanation, and adaptive system refinement. We elaborate and apply the concept of Value-Aligned Operational Design Domains (VODDs) to structure autonomy in accordance with contextual value priorities. Our approach shifts the emphasis from solving moral dilemmas at runtime to anticipating and structuring value-sensitive behaviour during development.
Sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics with library optimization mechanism: Recursive long-term prediction perspective
Yonezawa, Ansei, Yonezawa, Heisei, Yahagi, Shuichi, Kajiwara, Itsuro, Kijimoto, Shinya, Taniuchi, Hikaru, Murakami, Kentaro
The sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy) approach can discover the governing equations of dynamical systems based on measurement data, where the dynamical model is identified as the sparse linear combination of the given basis functions. A major challenge in SINDy is the design of a library, which is a set of candidate basis functions, as the appropriate library is not trivial for many dynamical systems. To overcome this difficulty, this study proposes SINDy with library optimization mechanism (SINDy-LOM), which is a combination of the sparse regression technique and the novel learning strategy of the library. In the proposed approach, the basis functions are parametrized. The SINDy-LOM approach involves a two-layer optimization architecture: the inner-layer, in which the data-driven model is extracted as the sparse linear combination of the candidate basis functions, and the outer-layer, in which the basis functions are optimized from the viewpoint of the recursive long-term (RLT) prediction accuracy; thus, the library design is reformulated as the optimization of the parametrized basis functions. The resulting SINDy-LOM model has good interpretability and usability, as the proposed approach yields the parsimonious model. The library optimization mechanism significantly reduces user burden. The RLT perspective improves the reliability of the resulting model compared with the traditional SINDy approach that can only ensure the one-step-ahead prediction accuracy. The validity of the proposed approach is demonstrated by applying it to a diesel engine airpath system, which is a well-known complex industrial system.
Goal-based Trajectory Prediction for improved Cross-Dataset Generalization
Grimm, Daniel, Abouelazm, Ahmed, Zรถllner, J. Marius
To achieve full autonomous driving, a good understanding of the surrounding environment is necessary. Especially predicting the future states of other traffic participants imposes a non-trivial challenge. Current SotA-models already show promising results when trained on real datasets (e.g. Argoverse2, NuScenes). Problems arise when these models are deployed to new/unseen areas. Typically, performance drops significantly, indicating that the models lack generalization. In this work, we introduce a new Graph Neural Network (GNN) that utilizes a heterogeneous graph consisting of traffic participants and vectorized road network. Latter, is used to classify goals, i.e. endpoints of the predicted trajectories, in a multi-staged approach, leading to a better generalization to unseen scenarios. We show the effectiveness of the goal selection process via cross-dataset evaluation, i.e. training on Argoverse2 and evaluating on NuScenes.
Neuromorphic Computing for Embodied Intelligence in Autonomous Systems: Current Trends, Challenges, and Future Directions
Marchisio, Alberto, Shafique, Muhammad
The growing need for intelligent, adaptive, and energy-efficient autonomous systems across fields such as robotics, mobile agents (e.g., UAVs), and self-driving vehicles is driving interest in neuromorphic computing. By drawing inspiration from biological neural systems, neuromorphic approaches offer promising pathways to enhance the perception, decision-making, and responsiveness of autonomous platforms. This paper surveys recent progress in neuromorphic algorithms, specialized hardware, and cross-layer optimization strategies, with a focus on their deployment in real-world autonomous scenarios. Special attention is given to event-based dynamic vision sensors and their role in enabling fast, efficient perception. The discussion highlights new methods that improve energy efficiency, robustness, adaptability, and reliability through the integration of spiking neural networks into autonomous system architectures. We integrate perspectives from machine learning, robotics, neuroscience, and neuromorphic engineering to offer a comprehensive view of the state of the field. Finally, emerging trends and open challenges are explored, particularly in the areas of real-time decision-making, continual learning, and the development of secure, resilient autonomous systems.
Agentic AI framework for End-to-End Medical Data Inference
Shimgekar, Soorya Ram, Vassef, Shayan, Goyal, Abhay, Kumar, Navin, Saha, Koustuv
--Building and deploying machine learning solutions in healthcare remains expensive and labor-intensive due to fragmented preprocessing workflows, model compatibility issues, and stringent data privacy constraints. In this work, we introduce an Agentic AI framework that automates the entire clinical data pipeline, from ingestion to inference, through a system of modular, task-specific agents. These agents are capable of handling both structured and unstructured data, enabling automatic feature selection, model selection, and preprocessing recommendation without manual intervention. We evaluate the system on publicly available datasets from geriatrics, palliative care, and colonoscopy imaging. For example, in the case of structured data (anxiety data) and unstructured data (colonoscopy polyps data), the pipeline begins with file-type detection by the "Ingestion Identifier Agent", followed by the "Data Anonymizer Agent" ensuring privacy compliance, where we first identify what type of data it is and then anonymize it. The "Feature Extraction Agent" then identifies features using an embedding-based approach for tabular data, which gives us all the column names, and a multistage MedGemma-based approach for image data, which gives us the modality and disease name. The "Preprocessing Recommender Agent" and "Preprocessing Implementor Agent" then apply tailored pre-processing based on data type and model requirements. Finally, the "Model Inference Agent" runs the selected model on the user uploaded data and generates interpretable outputs using tools like SHAP, LIME, and DETR attention maps. By automating these high-friction stages of the ML lifecycle, the proposed framework reduces the need for repeated expert intervention, offering a scalable and cost-efficient pathway for operationalizing AI in clinical environments. The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into clinical workflows holds transformative potential for healthcare, enabling timely, data-driven decision-making across diagnosis and treatment planning [1].
Policy Disruption in Reinforcement Learning:Adversarial Attack with Large Language Models and Critical State Identification
Jiang, Junyong, Tian, Buwei, Xu, Chenxing, Li, Songze, Dong, Lu
Reinforcement learning (RL) has achieved remarkable success in fields like robotics and autonomous driving, but adversarial attacks designed to mislead RL systems remain challenging. Existing approaches often rely on modifying the environment or policy, limiting their practicality. This paper proposes an adversarial attack method in which existing agents in the environment guide the target policy to output suboptimal actions without altering the environment. We propose a reward iteration optimization framework that leverages large language models (LLMs) to generate adversarial rewards explicitly tailored to the vulnerabilities of the target agent, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of inducing the target agent toward suboptimal decision-making. Additionally, a critical state identification algorithm is designed to pinpoint the target agent's most vulnerable states, where suboptimal behavior from the victim leads to significant degradation in overall performance. Experimental results in diverse environments demonstrate the superiority of our method over existing approaches.
AlphaGo Moment for Model Architecture Discovery
Liu, Yixiu, Nan, Yang, Xu, Weixian, Hu, Xiangkun, Ye, Lyumanshan, Qin, Zhen, Liu, Pengfei
While AI systems demonstrate exponentially improving capabilities, the pace of AI research itself remains linearly bounded by human cognitive capacity, creating an increasingly severe development bottleneck. We present ASI-Arch, the first demonstration of Artificial Superintelligence for AI research (ASI4AI) in the critical domain of neural architecture discovery--a fully autonomous system that shatters this fundamental constraint by enabling AI to conduct its own architectural innovation. Moving beyond traditional Neural Architecture Search (NAS), which is fundamentally limited to exploring human-defined spaces, we introduce a paradigm shift from automated optimization to automated innovation. ASI-Arch can conduct end-to-end scientific research in the domain of architecture discovery, autonomously hypothesizing novel architectural concepts, implementing them as executable code, training and empirically validating their performance through rigorous experimentation and past experience. ASI-Arch conducted 1,773 autonomous experiments over 20,000 GPU hours, culminating in the discovery of 106 innovative, state-of-the-art (SOTA) linear attention architectures. Like AlphaGo's Move 37 that revealed unexpected strategic insights invisible to human players, our AI-discovered architectures demonstrate emergent design principles that systematically surpass human-designed baselines and illuminate previously unknown pathways for architectural innovation. Crucially, we establish the first empirical scaling law for scientific discovery itself--demonstrating that architectural breakthroughs can be scaled computationally, transforming research progress from a human-limited to a computation-scalable process. We provide comprehensive analysis of the emergent design patterns and autonomous research capabilities that enabled these breakthroughs, establishing a blueprint for self-accelerating AI systems.
Multi-Agent Guided Policy Optimization
Li, Yueheng, Xie, Guangming, Lu, Zongqing
Due to practical constraints such as partial observability and limited communication, Centralized Training with Decentralized Execution (CTDE) has become the dominant paradigm in cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL). However, existing CTDE methods often underutilize centralized training or lack theoretical guarantees. We propose Multi-Agent Guided Policy Optimization (MAGPO), a novel framework that better leverages centralized training by integrating centralized guidance with decentralized execution. MAGPO uses an auto-regressive joint policy for scalable, coordinated exploration and explicitly aligns it with decentralized policies to ensure deployability under partial observability. We provide theoretical guarantees of monotonic policy improvement and empirically evaluate MAGPO on 43 tasks across 6 diverse environments. Results show that MAGPO consistently outperforms strong CTDE baselines and matches or surpasses fully centralized approaches, offering a principled and practical solution for decentralized multi-agent learning. Our code and experimental data can be found in https://github.com/liyheng/MAGPO.
Rapid Modeling Architecture for Lightweight Simulator to Accelerate and Improve Decision Making for Industrial Systems
Designing industrial systems, such as building, improving, and automating distribution centers and manufacturing plants, involves critical decision-making with limited information in the early phases. The lack of information leads to less accurate designs of the systems, which are often difficult to resolve later. It is effective to use simulators to model the designed system and find out the issues early. However, the modeling time required by conventional simulators is too long to allow for rapid model creation to meet decision-making demands. In this paper, we propose a Rapid Modeling Architecture (RMA) for a lightweight industrial simulator that mitigates the modeling burden while maintaining the essential details in order to accelerate and improve decision-making. We have prototyped a simulator based on the RMA and applied it to the actual factory layout design problem. We also compared the modeling time of our simulator to that of an existing simulator, and as a result, our simulator achieved a 78.3% reduction in modeling time compared to conventional simulators.