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Reinforcement Learning (RL) is known to be often unsuccessful in environments with sparse extrinsic rewards. A possible countermeasure is to endow RL agents with an intrinsic reward function, or 'intrinsic motivation', which rewards the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2021-07-16 Francesco Massari , Martin Biehl , Lisa Meeden , Ryota Kanai

We propose a new framework for multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), where the agents cooperate in a time-evolving network with latent community structures and mixed memberships. Unlike traditional neighbor-based or fixed interaction…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-16 Zhaoyang Shi

Cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) requires agents to discover joint strategies in a combinatorially large state-action space, yet effective coordination configurations are exceedingly rare. Intrinsic motivation, which…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Dahyun Oh , Minhyuk Yoon , H. Jin Kim

This paper studies a class of multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) problems where the reward that an agent receives depends on the states of other agents, but the next state only depends on the agent's own current state and action. We…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2023-05-16 Xin Liu , Honghao Wei , Lei Ying

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

Reward shaping is effective in addressing the sparse-reward challenge in reinforcement learning (RL) by providing immediate feedback through auxiliary, informative rewards. Based on the reward shaping strategy, we propose a novel multi-task…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-28 Haozhe Ma , Zhengding Luo , Thanh Vinh Vo , Kuankuan Sima , Tze-Yun Leong

Multi-agent adversarial inverse reinforcement learning (MA-AIRL) is a recent approach that applies single-agent AIRL to multi-agent problems where we seek to recover both policies for our agents and reward functions that promote expert-like…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2020-02-26 Wonseok Jeon , Paul Barde , Derek Nowrouzezahrai , Joelle Pineau

Multi-agent credit assignment is a fundamental challenge for cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), where a team of agents learn from shared reward signals. The Individual-Global-Max (IGM) condition is a widely used…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Wen-Tse Chen , Yuxuan Li , Shiyu Huang , Jiayu Chen , Jeff Schneider

We present a multi-agent actor-critic method that aims to implicitly address the credit assignment problem under fully cooperative settings. Our key motivation is that credit assignment among agents may not require an explicit formulation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-10-23 Meng Zhou , Ziyu Liu , Pengwei Sui , Yixuan Li , Yuk Ying Chung

We consider the problem of robust multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) for cooperative communication and coordination tasks. MARL agents, mainly those trained in a centralized way, can be brittle because they can adopt policies that…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2020-12-16 T. van der Heiden , C. Salge , E. Gavves , H. van Hoof

While multiagent systems have shown promise for tackling complex tasks via specialization, finetuning multiple agents simultaneously faces two key challenges: (1) credit assignment across agents, and (2) sample efficiency of expensive…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-05 Ed Li , Junyu Ren , Cat Yan

Cooperation is fundamental in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) and Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL), often requiring agents to balance individual gains with collective rewards. In this regard, this paper aims to investigate strategies to…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-05-06 Vaigarai Sathi , Sabahat Shaik , Jaswanth Nidamanuri

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) has gained significant traction for solving complex real-world tasks, but the inherent stochasticity and uncertainty in these environments pose substantial challenges to efficient and robust policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-22 Somnath Hazra , Pallab Dasgupta , Soumyajit Dey

Researchers have integrated exploration techniques into multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) algorithms, drawing on their remarkable success in deep reinforcement learning. Nonetheless, exploration in MARL presents a more substantial…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2023-06-13 Jian Tao , Yang Zhang , Yangkun Chen , Xiu Li

In tabular multi-agent reinforcement learning with average-cost criterion, a team of agents sequentially interacts with the environment and observes local incentives. We focus on the case that the global reward is a sum of local rewards,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-10-26 Alec Koppel , Amrit Singh Bedi , Bhargav Ganguly , Vaneet Aggarwal

Reinforcement learning agents are prone to undesired behaviors due to reward mis-specification. Finding a set of reward functions to properly guide agent behaviors is particularly challenging in multi-agent scenarios. Inverse reinforcement…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-01 Lantao Yu , Jiaming Song , Stefano Ermon

Reinforcement learning (RL) for large language models (LLMs) increasingly relies on sparse, outcome-level rewards -- yet determining which actions within a long trajectory caused the outcome remains difficult. This credit assignment (CA)…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-04-14 Chenchen Zhang

To reliably deploy Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) systems, it is crucial to understand individual agent behaviors. While prior work typically evaluates overall team performance based on explicit reward signals, it is unclear how…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-08-26 Ardian Selmonaj , Miroslav Strupl , Oleg Szehr , Alessandro Antonucci

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

Efficient exploration is important for reinforcement learners to achieve high rewards. In multi-agent systems, coordinated exploration and behaviour is critical for agents to jointly achieve optimal outcomes. In this paper, we introduce a…