Reinforcement learning of coordination in cooperative multi-agent systems
Spiros Kapetanakis, Daniel Kudenko⋆ · White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York) · 2002
We report on an investigation of reinforcement learning techniques for the learning of coordination in cooperative multi-agent systems. Specifically, we focus on a novel action selection strategy for Q-learning. The new technique is applicable to scenarios where mutual observation of actions is not possible. To date, reinforcement learning approaches for such independent agents did not guarantee convergence to the optimal joint action in scenarios with high miscoordination costs. We improve on previous results by demonstrating empirically that our extension causes the agents to converge almost always to the optimal joint action even in these difficult cases.