arXiv:2508.01049cs.LG2025-08

提出协同采样方法,提升多智能体强化学习的收敛可靠性。

Centralized Adaptive Sampling for Reliable Co-Training of Independent Multi-Agent Policies

  • 中心化调整采样策略,优先选择低频联合动作
  • 实验显示采样误差降低,算法收敛到最优解概率提升
  • 适合追求稳定训练的多智能体系统开发者

独立策略梯度算法在合作型多智能体强化学习中广泛应用,但当各智能体的个体策略梯度指向非最优联合均衡时,常出现次优收敛。本文发现,即使各智能体的期望梯度指向最优联合解,由于独立动作采样的随机性,联合数据分布仍可能偏离预期的联合在线分布,导致采样误差,进而产生偏差的梯度估计,使智能体次优收敛。为此,我们提出协作采样误差减少(CoSER)方法,在中心化训练、去中心化执行框架下,通过动态调整中心化行为策略,提高对当前联合策略下低频联合动作的采样概率,以减小联合采样误差。在多种多智能体博弈上的实验表明:(1) CoSER比独立在线采样更高效地减少联合采样误差;(2) 该改进显著提升了独立策略梯度算法的可靠性,即收敛至最优联合策略的概率更高。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Independent on-policy policy gradient algorithms are widely used for multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) in cooperative and no-conflict games, but they are known to converge sub-optimally when each agent's individual policy gradient points away from an optimal joint equilibrium. Going beyond prior work, we observe that sub-optimal convergence can still arise even when the expected individual policy gradients of each agent point toward the optimal joint solution. After collecting a finite set of trajectories, stochasticity in independent action sampling can cause the joint data distribution to deviate from the expected joint on-policy distribution. This \textit{sampling error} w.r.t. the joint on-policy distribution produces inaccurate gradient estimates that can make agents converge sub-optimally. We hypothesize that joint sampling error can be reduced through coordinated action selection and that doing so will increase the reliability of policy gradient learning in MARL (i.e., the probability of converging to an optimal joint policy). To test this hypothesis, we first introduce an adaptive action sampling approach to reduce joint sampling error in the Centralized Training with Decentralized Execution setting. Our method, Cooperative Sampling Error Reduction (CoSER), continually adapts a centralized behavior policy to place higher probability on joint actions that are under-sampled w.r.t. the current joint policy. We then empirically evaluate CoSER on a diverse set of multi-agent games and demonstrate that (1) CoSER reduces joint sampling error more efficiently than independent on-policy sampling and (2) this reduction increases the reliability of independent policy gradient algorithms.

多智能体强化学习采样优化

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