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 multi-agent reinforcement


Multi-Agent First Order Constrained Optimization in Policy Space

Neural Information Processing Systems

In the realm of multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), achieving high performance is crucial for a successful multi-agent system.



I2Q: AFullyDecentralizedQ-LearningAlgorithm

Neural Information Processing Systems

The modeling of ideal transition function inI2Q isfully decentralized and independent from the learned policies of other agents, helping I2Q be free from non-stationarity and learn the optimal policy.


A game-theoretic analysis of networked system control for common-pool resource management using multi-agent reinforcement learning

Neural Information Processing Systems

Multi-agent reinforcement learning has recently shown great promise as an approach to networked system control. Arguably, one of the most difficult and important tasks for which large scale networked system control is applicable is common-pool resource management. Crucial common-pool resources include arable land, fresh water, wetlands, wildlife, fish stock, forests and the atmosphere, of which proper management is related to some of society's greatest challenges such as food security, inequality and climate change. Here we take inspiration from a recent research program investigating the game-theoretic incentives of humans in social dilemma situations such as the well-known \textit{tragedy of the commons}. However, instead of focusing on biologically evolved human-like agents, our concern is rather to better understand the learning and operating behaviour of engineered networked systems comprising general-purpose reinforcement learning agents, subject only to nonbiological constraints such as memory, computation and communication bandwidth. Harnessing tools from empirical game-theoretic analysis, we analyse the differences in resulting solution concepts that stem from employing different information structures in the design of networked multi-agent systems. These information structures pertain to the type of information shared between agents as well as the employed communication protocol and network topology. Our analysis contributes new insights into the consequences associated with certain design choices and provides an additional dimension of comparison between systems beyond efficiency, robustness, scalability and mean control performance.


Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Communication-Constrained Priors

Yang, Guang, Yang, Tianpei, Qiao, Jingwen, Wu, Yanqing, Huo, Jing, Chen, Xingguo, Gao, Yang

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Communication is one of the effective means to improve the learning of cooperative policy in multi-agent systems. However, in most real-world scenarios, lossy communication is a prevalent issue. Existing multi-agent reinforcement learning with communication, due to their limited scalability and robustness, struggles to apply to complex and dynamic real-world environments. To address these challenges, we propose a generalized communication-constrained model to uniformly characterize communication conditions across different scenarios. Based on this, we utilize it as a learning prior to distinguish between lossy and lossless messages for specific scenarios. Additionally, we decouple the impact of lossy and lossless messages on distributed decision-making, drawing on a dual mutual information estimatior, and introduce a communication-constrained multi-agent reinforcement learning framework, quantifying the impact of communication messages into the global reward. Finally, we validate the effectiveness of our approach across several communication-constrained benchmarks.


Dialogue Diplomats: An End-to-End Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning System for Automated Conflict Resolution and Consensus Building

Bolleddu, Deepak

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Conflict resolution and consensus building represent critical challenges in multi-agent systems, negotiations, and collaborative decision-making processes. This paper introduces Dialogue Diplomats, a novel end-to-end multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) framework designed for automated conflict resolution and consensus building in complex, dynamic environments. The proposed system integrates advanced deep reinforcement learning architectures with dialogue-based negotiation protocols, enabling autonomous agents to engage in sophisticated conflict resolution through iterative communication and strategic adaptation. We present three primary contributions: first, a novel Hierarchical Consensus Network (HCN) architecture that combines attention mechanisms with graph neural networks to model inter-agent dependencies and conflict dynamics. second, a Progressive Negotiation Protocol (PNP) that structures multi-round dialogue interactions with adaptive concession strategies; and third, a Context-Aware Reward Shaping mechanism that balances individual agent objectives with collective consensus goals.


A multi-agent reinforcement learning model of common-pool resource appropriation

Neural Information Processing Systems

Humanity faces numerous problems of common-pool resource appropriation. This class of multi-agent social dilemma includes the problems of ensuring sustainable use of fresh water, common fisheries, grazing pastures, and irrigation systems. Abstract models of common-pool resource appropriation based on non-cooperative game theory predict that self-interested agents will generally fail to find socially positive equilibria---a phenomenon called the tragedy of the commons. However, in reality, human societies are sometimes able to discover and implement stable cooperative solutions. Decades of behavioral game theory research have sought to uncover aspects of human behavior that make this possible.



Fair-GNE : Generalized Nash Equilibrium-Seeking Fairness in Multiagent Healthcare Automation

Ekpo, Promise, Agarwal, Saesha, Grimm, Felix, Molu, Lekan, Taylor, Angelique

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Enforcing a fair workload allocation among multiple agents tasked to achieve an objective in learning enabled demand side healthcare worker settings is crucial for consistent and reliable performance at runtime. Existing multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) approaches steer fairness by shaping reward through post hoc orchestrations, leaving no certifiable self-enforceable fairness that is immutable by individual agents at runtime. Contextualized within a setting where each agent shares resources with others, we address this shortcoming with a learning enabled optimization scheme among self-interested decision makers whose individual actions affect those of other agents. This extends the problem to a generalized Nash equilibrium (GNE) game-theoretic framework where we steer group policy to a safe and locally efficient equilibrium, so that no agent can improve its utility function by unilaterally changing its decisions. Fair-GNE models MARL as a constrained generalized Nash equilibrium-seeking (GNE) game, prescribing an ideal equitable collective equilibrium within the problem's natural fabric. Our hypothesis is rigorously evaluated in our custom-designed high-fidelity resuscitation simulator. Across all our numerical experiments, Fair-GNE achieves significant improvement in workload balance over fixed-penalty baselines (0.89 vs.\ 0.33 JFI, $p < 0.01$) while maintaining 86\% task success, demonstrating statistically significant fairness gains through adaptive constraint enforcement. Our results communicate our formulations, evaluation metrics, and equilibrium-seeking innovations in large multi-agent learning-based healthcare systems with clarity and principled fairness enforcement.


Rainbow Delay Compensation: A Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Framework for Mitigating Delayed Observation

Fu, Songchen, Chen, Siang, Zhao, Shaojing, Bai, Letian, Li, Ta, Yan, Yonghong

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

In real-world multi-agent systems (MASs), observation delays are ubiquitous, preventing agents from making decisions based on the environment's true state. An individual agent's local observation typically comprises multiple components from other agents or dynamic entities within the environment. These discrete observation components with varying delay characteristics pose significant challenges for multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). In this paper, we first formulate the decentralized stochastic individual delay partially observable Markov decision process (DSID-POMDP) by extending the standard Dec-POMDP. We then propose the Rainbow Delay Compensation (RDC), a MARL training framework for addressing stochastic individual delays, along with recommended implementations for its constituent modules. We implement the DSID-POMDP's observation generation pattern using standard MARL benchmarks, including MPE and SMAC. Experiments demonstrate that baseline MARL methods suffer severe performance degradation under fixed and unfixed delays. The RDC-enhanced approach mitigates this issue, remarkably achieving ideal delay-free performance in certain delay scenarios while maintaining generalizability. Our work provides a novel perspective on multi-agent delayed observation problems and offers an effective solution framework. The source code is available at https://github.com/linkjoker1006/RDC-pymarl.