DM$^2$: Decentralized Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Distribution Matching

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wang, Caroline, Durugkar, Ishan, Liebman, Elad, Stone, Peter
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
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_version_ 1866911106349400064
author Wang, Caroline
Durugkar, Ishan
Liebman, Elad
Stone, Peter
author_facet Wang, Caroline
Durugkar, Ishan
Liebman, Elad
Stone, Peter
contents Current approaches to multi-agent cooperation rely heavily on centralized mechanisms or explicit communication protocols to ensure convergence. This paper studies the problem of distributed multi-agent learning without resorting to centralized components or explicit communication. It examines the use of distribution matching to facilitate the coordination of independent agents. In the proposed scheme, each agent independently minimizes the distribution mismatch to the corresponding component of a target visitation distribution. The theoretical analysis shows that under certain conditions, each agent minimizing its individual distribution mismatch allows the convergence to the joint policy that generated the target distribution. Further, if the target distribution is from a joint policy that optimizes a cooperative task, the optimal policy for a combination of this task reward and the distribution matching reward is the same joint policy. This insight is used to formulate a practical algorithm (DM$^2$), in which each individual agent matches a target distribution derived from concurrently sampled trajectories from a joint expert policy. Experimental validation on the StarCraft domain shows that combining (1) a task reward, and (2) a distribution matching reward for expert demonstrations for the same task, allows agents to outperform a naive distributed baseline. Additional experiments probe the conditions under which expert demonstrations need to be sampled to obtain the learning benefits.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2206_00233
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle DM$^2$: Decentralized Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Distribution Matching
Wang, Caroline
Durugkar, Ishan
Liebman, Elad
Stone, Peter
Multiagent Systems
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Robotics
I.2.0; I.2.8; I.2.9; I.2.11
Current approaches to multi-agent cooperation rely heavily on centralized mechanisms or explicit communication protocols to ensure convergence. This paper studies the problem of distributed multi-agent learning without resorting to centralized components or explicit communication. It examines the use of distribution matching to facilitate the coordination of independent agents. In the proposed scheme, each agent independently minimizes the distribution mismatch to the corresponding component of a target visitation distribution. The theoretical analysis shows that under certain conditions, each agent minimizing its individual distribution mismatch allows the convergence to the joint policy that generated the target distribution. Further, if the target distribution is from a joint policy that optimizes a cooperative task, the optimal policy for a combination of this task reward and the distribution matching reward is the same joint policy. This insight is used to formulate a practical algorithm (DM$^2$), in which each individual agent matches a target distribution derived from concurrently sampled trajectories from a joint expert policy. Experimental validation on the StarCraft domain shows that combining (1) a task reward, and (2) a distribution matching reward for expert demonstrations for the same task, allows agents to outperform a naive distributed baseline. Additional experiments probe the conditions under which expert demonstrations need to be sampled to obtain the learning benefits.
title DM$^2$: Decentralized Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Distribution Matching
topic Multiagent Systems
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Robotics
I.2.0; I.2.8; I.2.9; I.2.11
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.00233