Coordination Failure in Cooperative Offline MARL

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Tilbury, Callum Rhys, Formanek, Claude, Beyers, Louise, Shock, Jonathan P., Pretorius, Arnu
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Tilbury, Callum Rhys
Formanek, Claude
Beyers, Louise
Shock, Jonathan P.
Pretorius, Arnu
author_facet Tilbury, Callum Rhys
Formanek, Claude
Beyers, Louise
Shock, Jonathan P.
Pretorius, Arnu
contents Offline multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) leverages static datasets of experience to learn optimal multi-agent control. However, learning from static data presents several unique challenges to overcome. In this paper, we focus on coordination failure and investigate the role of joint actions in multi-agent policy gradients with offline data, focusing on a common setting we refer to as the 'Best Response Under Data' (BRUD) approach. By using two-player polynomial games as an analytical tool, we demonstrate a simple yet overlooked failure mode of BRUD-based algorithms, which can lead to catastrophic coordination failure in the offline setting. Building on these insights, we propose an approach to mitigate such failure, by prioritising samples from the dataset based on joint-action similarity during policy learning and demonstrate its effectiveness in detailed experiments. More generally, however, we argue that prioritised dataset sampling is a promising area for innovation in offline MARL that can be combined with other effective approaches such as critic and policy regularisation. Importantly, our work shows how insights drawn from simplified, tractable games can lead to useful, theoretically grounded insights that transfer to more complex contexts. A core dimension of offering is an interactive notebook, from which almost all of our results can be reproduced, in a browser.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_01343
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Coordination Failure in Cooperative Offline MARL
Tilbury, Callum Rhys
Formanek, Claude
Beyers, Louise
Shock, Jonathan P.
Pretorius, Arnu
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Multiagent Systems
Offline multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) leverages static datasets of experience to learn optimal multi-agent control. However, learning from static data presents several unique challenges to overcome. In this paper, we focus on coordination failure and investigate the role of joint actions in multi-agent policy gradients with offline data, focusing on a common setting we refer to as the 'Best Response Under Data' (BRUD) approach. By using two-player polynomial games as an analytical tool, we demonstrate a simple yet overlooked failure mode of BRUD-based algorithms, which can lead to catastrophic coordination failure in the offline setting. Building on these insights, we propose an approach to mitigate such failure, by prioritising samples from the dataset based on joint-action similarity during policy learning and demonstrate its effectiveness in detailed experiments. More generally, however, we argue that prioritised dataset sampling is a promising area for innovation in offline MARL that can be combined with other effective approaches such as critic and policy regularisation. Importantly, our work shows how insights drawn from simplified, tractable games can lead to useful, theoretically grounded insights that transfer to more complex contexts. A core dimension of offering is an interactive notebook, from which almost all of our results can be reproduced, in a browser.
title Coordination Failure in Cooperative Offline MARL
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.01343