用隐式共识机制让多智能体协同决策更稳定高效
Bridging MARL to SARL: An Order-Independent Multi-Agent Transformer via Latent Consensus

- 将多智能体统一建模为整体,通过变压器编码器处理联合观测
- 生成高层共识向量后同步行动,避免传统方法对动作顺序的敏感
- 在星际争霸等任务中性能超越主流方法,适合需要强协作的场景
协作式多智能体强化学习(MARL)通过将集中控制问题分解为多个交互智能体来应对庞大的联合观测与动作空间。然而这种分解常带来非平稳性、训练不稳定、协调能力弱及理论保障不足等问题。本文提出共识多智能体变压器(CMAT),一种将协作MARL连接到分层单智能体强化学习(SARL)的形式化框架。CMAT将所有智能体视为统一实体,使用Transformer编码器处理大规模联合观测;为应对广泛的动作空间,引入分层决策机制,其中Transformer解码器自回归生成高层共识向量,模拟智能体在隐空间达成策略一致的过程。基于该共识,所有智能体同步生成动作,实现与顺序无关的联合决策,克服了传统多智能体变压器对动作生成顺序的敏感性。该分解使联合策略可采用单智能体PPO进行优化,同时通过隐式共识保留强协调能力。我们在星际争霸Ⅱ、多智能体MuJoCo和谷歌研究足球等基准任务上进行实验,结果表明CMAT在性能上优于近期集中式解决方案、序列化MARL方法及传统MARL基线。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) is widely used to address large joint observation and action spaces by decomposing a centralized control problem into multiple interacting agents. However, such decomposition often introduces additional challenges, including non-stationarity, unstable training, weak coordination, and limited theoretical guarantees. In this paper, we propose the Consensus Multi-Agent Transformer (CMAT), a centralized framework that bridges cooperative MARL to a hierarchical single-agent reinforcement learning (SARL) formulation. CMAT treats all agents as a unified entity and employs a Transformer encoder to process the large joint observation space. To handle the extensive joint action space, we introduce a hierarchical decision-making mechanism in which a Transformer decoder autoregressively generates a high-level consensus vector, simulating the process by which agents reach agreement on their strategies in latent space. Conditioned on this consensus, all agents generate their actions simultaneously, enabling order-independent joint decision making and avoiding the sensitivity to action-generation order in conventional Multi-Agent Transformers (MAT). This factorization allows the joint policy to be optimized using single-agent PPO while preserving expressive coordination through the latent consensus. To evaluate the proposed method, we conduct experiments on benchmark tasks from StarCraft II, Multi-Agent MuJoCo, and Google Research Football. The results show that CMAT achieves superior performance over recent centralized solutions, sequential MARL methods, and conventional MARL baselines. The code for this paper is available at:https://github.com/RS2002/CMAT .
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