Agents
A Constrained Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach to Autonomous Traffic Signal Control
Satheesh, Anirudh, Powell, Keenan
Traffic congestion in modern cities is exacerbated by the limitations of traditional fixed-time traffic signal systems, which fail to adapt to dynamic traffic patterns. Adaptive Traffic Signal Control (ATSC) algorithms have emerged as a solution by dynamically adjusting signal timing based on real-time traffic conditions. However, the main limitation of such methods is that they are not transferable to environments under real-world constraints, such as balancing efficiency, minimizing collisions, and ensuring fairness across intersections. In this paper, we view the ATSC problem as a constrained multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) problem and propose a novel algorithm named Multi-Agent Proximal Policy Optimization with Lagrange Cost Estimator (MAPPO-LCE) to produce effective traffic signal control policies. Our approach integrates the Lagrange multipliers method to balance rewards and constraints, with a cost estimator for stable adjustment. We also introduce three constraints on the traffic network: GreenTime, GreenSkip, and PhaseSkip, which penalize traffic policies that do not conform to real-world scenarios. Our experimental results on three real-world datasets demonstrate that MAPPO-LCE outperforms three baseline MARL algorithms by across all environments and traffic constraints (improving on MAPPO by 12.60%, IPPO by 10.29%, and QTRAN by 13.10%). Our results show that constrained MARL is a valuable tool for traffic planners to deploy scalable and efficient ATSC methods in real-world traffic networks. We provide code at https://github.com/Asatheesh6561/MAPPO-LCE.
AI Agents in Engineering Design: A Multi-Agent Framework for Aesthetic and Aerodynamic Car Design
Elrefaie, Mohamed, Qian, Janet, Wu, Raina, Chen, Qian, Dai, Angela, Ahmed, Faez
We introduce the concept of "Design Agents" for engineering applications, particularly focusing on the automotive design process, while emphasizing that our approach can be readily extended to other engineering and design domains. Our framework integrates AI-driven design agents into the traditional engineering workflow, demonstrating how these specialized computational agents interact seamlessly with engineers and designers to augment creativity, enhance efficiency, and significantly accelerate the overall design cycle. By automating and streamlining tasks traditionally performed manually, such as conceptual sketching, styling enhancements, 3D shape retrieval and generative modeling, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) meshing, and aerodynamic simulations, our approach reduces certain aspects of the conventional workflow from weeks and days down to minutes. These agents leverage state-of-the-art vision-language models (VLMs), large language models (LLMs), and geometric deep learning techniques, providing rapid iteration and comprehensive design exploration capabilities. We ground our methodology in industry-standard benchmarks, encompassing a wide variety of conventional automotive designs, and utilize high-fidelity aerodynamic simulations to ensure practical and applicable outcomes. Furthermore, we present design agents that can swiftly and accurately predict simulation outcomes, empowering engineers and designers to engage in more informed design optimization and exploration. This research underscores the transformative potential of integrating advanced generative AI techniques into complex engineering tasks, paving the way for broader adoption and innovation across multiple engineering disciplines.
SPIO: Ensemble and Selective Strategies via LLM-Based Multi-Agent Planning in Automated Data Science
Seo, Wonduk, Lee, Juhyeon, Bu, Yi
Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized automated data analytics and machine learning by enabling dynamic reasoning and adaptability. While recent approaches have advanced multi-stage pipelines through multi-agent systems, they typically rely on rigid, single-path workflows that limit the exploration and integration of diverse strategies, often resulting in suboptimal predictions. To address these challenges, we propose SPIO (Sequential Plan Integration and Optimization), a novel framework that leverages LLM-driven decision-making to orchestrate multi-agent planning across four key modules: data preprocessing, feature engineering, modeling, and hyperparameter tuning. In each module, dedicated planning agents independently generate candidate strategies that cascade into subsequent stages, fostering comprehensive exploration. A plan optimization agent refines these strategies by suggesting several optimized plans. We further introduce two variants: SPIO-S, which selects a single best solution path as determined by the LLM, and SPIO-E, which selects the top k candidate plans and ensembles them to maximize predictive performance. Extensive experiments on Kaggle and OpenML datasets demonstrate that SPIO significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods, providing a robust and scalable solution for automated data science task.
A Survey of WebAgents: Towards Next-Generation AI Agents for Web Automation with Large Foundation Models
Ning, Liangbo, Liang, Ziran, Jiang, Zhuohang, Qu, Haohao, Ding, Yujuan, Fan, Wenqi, Wei, Xiao-yong, Lin, Shanru, Liu, Hui, Yu, Philip S., Li, Qing
With the advancement of web techniques, they have significantly revolutionized various aspects of people's lives. Despite the importance of the web, many tasks performed on it are repetitive and time-consuming, negatively impacting overall quality of life. To efficiently handle these tedious daily tasks, one of the most promising approaches is to advance autonomous agents based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, referred to as AI Agents, as they can operate continuously without fatigue or performance degradation. In the context of the web, leveraging AI Agents -- termed WebAgents -- to automatically assist people in handling tedious daily tasks can dramatically enhance productivity and efficiency. Recently, Large Foundation Models (LFMs) containing billions of parameters have exhibited human-like language understanding and reasoning capabilities, showing proficiency in performing various complex tasks. This naturally raises the question: `Can LFMs be utilized to develop powerful AI Agents that automatically handle web tasks, providing significant convenience to users?' To fully explore the potential of LFMs, extensive research has emerged on WebAgents designed to complete daily web tasks according to user instructions, significantly enhancing the convenience of daily human life. In this survey, we comprehensively review existing research studies on WebAgents across three key aspects: architectures, training, and trustworthiness. Additionally, several promising directions for future research are explored to provide deeper insights.
RL2Grid: Benchmarking Reinforcement Learning in Power Grid Operations
Marchesini, Enrico, Donnot, Benjamin, Crozier, Constance, Dytham, Ian, Merz, Christian, Schewe, Lars, Westerbeck, Nico, Wu, Cathy, Marot, Antoine, Donti, Priya L.
Reinforcement learning (RL) can transform power grid operations by providing adaptive and scalable controllers essential for grid decarbonization. However, existing methods struggle with the complex dynamics, aleatoric uncertainty, long-horizon goals, and hard physical constraints that occur in real-world systems. This paper presents RL2Grid, a benchmark designed in collaboration with power system operators to accelerate progress in grid control and foster RL maturity. Built on a power simulation framework developed by RTE France, RL2Grid standardizes tasks, state and action spaces, and reward structures within a unified interface for a systematic evaluation and comparison of RL approaches. Moreover, we integrate real control heuristics and safety constraints informed by the operators' expertise to ensure RL2Grid aligns with grid operation requirements. We benchmark popular RL baselines on the grid control tasks represented within RL2Grid, establishing reference performance metrics. Our results and discussion highlight the challenges that power grids pose for RL methods, emphasizing the need for novel algorithms capable of handling real-world physical systems.
EncGPT: A Multi-Agent Workflow for Dynamic Encryption Algorithms
Li, Donghe, Li, Zuchen, Yang, Ye, Sun, Li, An, Dou, Yang, Qingyu
Communication encryption is crucial in computer technology, but existing algorithms struggle with balancing cost and security. We propose EncGPT, a multi-agent framework using large language models (LLM). It includes rule, encryption, and decryption agents that generate encryption rules and apply them dynamically. This approach addresses gaps in LLM-based multi-agent systems for communication security. We tested GPT-4o's rule generation and implemented a substitution encryption workflow with homomorphism preservation, achieving an average execution time of 15.99 seconds.
AIhub monthly digest: March 2025 – human-allied AI, differential privacy, and social media microtargeting
Welcome to our monthly digest, where you can catch up with any AIhub stories you may have missed, peruse the latest news, recap recent events, and more. This month's digest includes four interviews. We hear from two newly-elected AAAI Fellows, and two researchers at the start of their careers, to find out about their different research areas – human-allied AI, multilingual natural language processing, microtargeting and activity patterns on social media, and differential privacy. We are delighted to announce the launch of our interview series featuring the 2025-elected AAAI Fellows. We began the series in style, meeting Sriraam Natarajan to talk about his research on human-allied AI.
WorkTeam: Constructing Workflows from Natural Language with Multi-Agents
Liu, Hanchao, Li, Rongjun, Xiong, Weimin, Zhou, Ziyu, Peng, Wei
Workflows play a crucial role in enhancing enterprise efficiency by orchestrating complex processes with multiple tools or components. However, hand-crafted workflow construction requires expert knowledge, presenting significant technical barriers. Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have improved the generation of workflows from natural language instructions (aka NL2Workflow), yet existing single LLM agent-based methods face performance degradation on complex tasks due to the need for specialized knowledge and the strain of task-switching. To tackle these challenges, we propose WorkTeam, a multi-agent NL2Workflow framework comprising a supervisor, orchestrator, and filler agent, each with distinct roles that collaboratively enhance the conversion process. As there are currently no publicly available NL2Workflow benchmarks, we also introduce the HW-NL2Workflow dataset, which includes 3,695 real-world business samples for training and evaluation. Experimental results show that our approach significantly increases the success rate of workflow construction, providing a novel and effective solution for enterprise NL2Workflow services.
Self-Evolving Multi-Agent Simulations for Realistic Clinical Interactions
Almansoori, Mohammad, Kumar, Komal, Cholakkal, Hisham
In this work, we introduce MedAgentSim, an open-source simulated clinical environment with doctor, patient, and measurement agents designed to evaluate and enhance LLM performance in dynamic diagnostic settings. Unlike prior approaches, our framework requires doctor agents to actively engage with patients through multi-turn conversations, requesting relevant medical examinations (e.g., temperature, blood pressure, ECG) and imaging results (e.g., MRI, X-ray) from a measurement agent to mimic the real-world diagnostic process. Additionally, we incorporate self improvement mechanisms that allow models to iteratively refine their diagnostic strategies. We enhance LLM performance in our simulated setting by integrating multi-agent discussions, chain-of-thought reasoning, and experience-based knowledge retrieval, facilitating progressive learning as doctor agents interact with more patients. We also introduce an evaluation benchmark for assessing the LLM's ability to engage in dynamic, context-aware diagnostic interactions. While MedAgentSim is fully automated, it also supports a user-controlled mode, enabling human interaction with either the doctor or patient agent. Comprehensive evaluations in various simulated diagnostic scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Our code, simulation tool, and benchmark are available at \href{https://medagentsim.netlify.app/}.
Cooperative Hybrid Multi-Agent Pathfinding Based on Shared Exploration Maps
Liu, Ning, Shen, Sen, Kong, Xiangrui, Zhang, Hongtao, Bräunl, Thomas
Multi-Agent Pathfinding is used in areas including multi-robot formations, warehouse logistics, and intelligent vehicles. However, many environments are incomplete or frequently change, making it difficult for standard centralized planning or pure reinforcement learning to maintain both global solution quality and local flexibility. This paper introduces a hybrid framework that integrates D* Lite global search with multi-agent reinforcement learning, using a switching mechanism and a freeze-prevention strategy to handle dynamic conditions and crowded settings. We evaluate the framework in the discrete POGEMA environment and compare it with baseline methods. Experimental outcomes indicate that the proposed framework substantially improves success rate, collision rate, and path efficiency. The model is further tested on the EyeSim platform, where it maintains feasible Pathfinding under frequent changes and large-scale robot deployments.