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Training a multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) model with a sparse reward is generally difficult because numerous combinations of interactions among agents induce a certain outcome (i.e., success or failure). Earlier studies have…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-08 Heechang Ryu , Hayong Shin , Jinkyoo Park

Solving tasks with sparse rewards is one of the most important challenges in reinforcement learning. In the single-agent setting, this challenge is addressed by introducing intrinsic rewards that motivate agents to explore unseen regions of…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-25 Shariq Iqbal , Fei Sha

Cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) has made prominent progress in recent years. For training efficiency and scalability, most of the MARL algorithms make all agents share the same policy or value network. However, in many…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-07 Mingyu Yang , Jian Zhao , Xunhan Hu , Wengang Zhou , Jiangcheng Zhu , Houqiang Li

Episodic rewards present a significant challenge in reinforcement learning. While intrinsic reward methods have demonstrated effectiveness in single-agent rein-forcement learning scenarios, their application to multi-agent reinforcement…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-11-24 Kesheng Chen , Wenjian Luo , Bang Zhang , Zeping Yin , Zipeng Ye

Cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) aims to coordinate multiple agents to achieve a common goal. A key challenge in MARL is credit assignment, which involves assessing each agent's contribution to the shared reward. Given…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-08-12 Xutong Zhao , Yaqi Xie

To achieve general intelligence, agents must learn how to interact with others in a shared environment: this is the challenge of multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL). The simplest form is independent reinforcement learning (InRL), where…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2017-11-08 Marc Lanctot , Vinicius Zambaldi , Audrunas Gruslys , Angeliki Lazaridou , Karl Tuyls , Julien Perolat , David Silver , Thore Graepel

A central problem in the theory of multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) is to understand what structural conditions and algorithmic principles lead to sample-efficient learning guarantees, and how these considerations change as we move…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-02 Dylan J. Foster , Dean P. Foster , Noah Golowich , Alexander Rakhlin

Autonomous exploration in complex multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) with sparse rewards critically depends on providing agents with effective intrinsic motivation. While artificial curiosity offers a powerful self-supervised signal,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-24 Yiyuan Pan , Zhe Liu , Hesheng Wang

The majority of Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) literature equates the cooperation of self-interested agents in mixed environments to the problem of social welfare maximization, allowing agents to arbitrarily share rewards and…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2023-06-16 Dmitry Ivanov , Ilya Zisman , Kirill Chernyshev

In human society, the conflict between self-interest and collective well-being often obstructs efforts to achieve shared welfare. Related concepts like the Tragedy of the Commons and Social Dilemmas frequently manifest in our daily lives.…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2025-06-17 Yue Jin , Shuangqing Wei , Giovanni Montana

Multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) has achieved notable success in cooperative tasks, demonstrating impressive performance and scalability. However, deploying MARL agents in real-world applications presents critical safety…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-25 Zeyang Li , Navid Azizan

Discovering successful coordinated behaviors is a central challenge in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) since it requires exploring a joint action space that grows exponentially with the number of agents. In this paper, we propose…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-14 Ammar Fayad , Majd Ibrahim

Exploration in decentralized cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning faces two challenges. One is that the novelty of global states is unavailable, while the novelty of local observations is biased. The other is how agents can…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2024-08-13 Haobin Jiang , Ziluo Ding , Zongqing Lu

Multi-agent reinforcement learning in dynamic social dilemmas commonly relies on parameter sharing to enable scalability. We show that in shared-policy Deep Q-Network learning, standard exploration can induce a robust and systematic…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2026-01-12 Yi-Ning Weng , Hsuan-Wei Lee

Cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) under sparse rewards remains fundamentally challenging because agents often fail to concentrate their influence, leading to insufficiently coordinated exploration. To address this, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Yisak Park , Sunwoo Lee , Seungyul Han

It has long been recognized that multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) faces significant scalability issues due to the fact that the size of the state and action spaces are exponentially large in the number of agents. In this paper, we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-06-12 Guannan Qu , Yiheng Lin , Adam Wierman , Na Li

Multi-agent systems (MAS) are widely prevalent and crucially important in numerous real-world applications, where multiple agents must make decisions to achieve their objectives in a shared environment. Despite their ubiquity, the…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2024-07-04 Dom Huh , Prasant Mohapatra

Reinforcement learning has significant applications for multi-agent systems, especially in unknown dynamic environments. However, most multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) algorithms suffer from such problems as exponential computation…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2016-04-01 Luowei Zhou , Pei Yang , Chunlin Chen , Yang Gao

Many cooperative multiagent reinforcement learning environments provide agents with a sparse team-based reward, as well as a dense agent-specific reward that incentivizes learning basic skills. Training policies solely on the team-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-13 Shauharda Khadka , Somdeb Majumdar , Santiago Miret , Stephen McAleer , Kagan Tumer

Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) is a powerful tool for training autonomous agents acting independently in a common environment. However, it can lead to sub-optimal behavior when individual incentives and group incentives diverge.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-01-30 Andreas A. Haupt , Phillip J. K. Christoffersen , Mehul Damani , Dylan Hadfield-Menell