Collision-free parking recommendation based on multi-agent reinforcement learning in vehicular crowdsensing

The recent proliferation of Fifth-Generation(5G)networks and Sixth-Generation(6G)networks has given rise to Vehicular Crowd Sensing(VCS)systems which solve parking collisions by effectively incentivizing vehicle participation.However,instead of being an isolated module,the incentive mechanism usually interacts with other modules.Based on this,we capture this synergy and propose a Collision-free Parking Recommendation(CPR),a novel VCS system framework that integrates an incentive mechanism,a non-cooperative VCS game,and a multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm,to derive an optimal parking strategy in real time.Specifically,we utilize an LSTM method to predict parking areas roughly for recommendations accurately.Its incentive mechanism is designed to motivate vehicle participation by considering dynamically priced parking tasks and social network effects.In order to cope with stochastic parking collisions,its non-cooperative VCS game further analyzes the uncertain interactions between vehicles in parking decision-making.Then its multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm models the VCS campaign as a multi-agent Markov decision process that not only derives the optimal collision-free parking strategy for each vehicle independently,but also proves that the optimal parking strategy for each vehicle is Pareto-optimal.Finally,numerical results demonstrate that CPR can accomplish parking tasks at a 99.7%accuracy compared with other baselines,efficiently recommending parking spaces.

Unleashing the Power of Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Algorithmic Trading in the Digital Financial Frontier and Enterprise Information Systems

In the rapidly evolving landscape of today’s digital economy,Financial Technology(Fintech)emerges as a trans-formative force,propelled by the dynamic synergy between Artificial Intelligence(AI)and Algorithmic Trading.Our in-depth investigation delves into the intricacies of merging Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning(MARL)and Explainable AI(XAI)within Fintech,aiming to refine Algorithmic Trading strategies.Through meticulous examination,we uncover the nuanced interactions of AI-driven agents as they collaborate and compete within the financial realm,employing sophisticated deep learning techniques to enhance the clarity and adaptability of trading decisions.These AI-infused Fintech platforms harness collective intelligence to unearth trends,mitigate risks,and provide tailored financial guidance,fostering benefits for individuals and enterprises navigating the digital landscape.Our research holds the potential to revolutionize finance,opening doors to fresh avenues for investment and asset management in the digital age.Additionally,our statistical evaluation yields encouraging results,with metrics such as Accuracy=0.85,Precision=0.88,and F1 Score=0.86,reaffirming the efficacy of our approach within Fintech and emphasizing its reliability and innovative prowess.

Discovering Latent Variables for the Tasks With Confounders in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

Efficient exploration in complex coordination tasks has been considered a challenging problem in multi-agent reinforcement learning(MARL). It is significantly more difficult for those tasks with latent variables that agents cannot directly observe. However, most of the existing latent variable discovery methods lack a clear representation of latent variables and an effective evaluation of the influence of latent variables on the agent. In this paper, we propose a new MARL algorithm based on the soft actor-critic method for complex continuous control tasks with confounders. It is called the multi-agent soft actor-critic with latent variable(MASAC-LV) algorithm, which uses variational inference theory to infer the compact latent variables representation space from a large amount of offline experience.Besides, we derive the counterfactual policy whose input has no latent variables and quantify the difference between the actual policy and the counterfactual policy via a distance function. This quantified difference is considered an intrinsic motivation that gives additional rewards based on how much the latent variable affects each agent. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on two collaboration tasks with confounders, and the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of MASAC-LV compared to other baseline algorithms.

Safety-Constrained Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Power Quality Control in Distributed Renewable Energy Networks

This paper examines the difficulties of managing distributed power systems,notably due to the increasing use of renewable energy sources,and focuses on voltage control challenges exacerbated by their variable nature in modern power grids.To tackle the unique challenges of voltage control in distributed renewable energy networks,researchers are increasingly turning towards multi-agent reinforcement learning(MARL).However,MARL raises safety concerns due to the unpredictability in agent actions during their exploration phase.This unpredictability can lead to unsafe control measures.To mitigate these safety concerns in MARL-based voltage control,our study introduces a novel approach:Safety-ConstrainedMulti-Agent Reinforcement Learning(SC-MARL).This approach incorporates a specialized safety constraint module specifically designed for voltage control within the MARL framework.This module ensures that the MARL agents carry out voltage control actions safely.The experiments demonstrate that,in the 33-buses,141-buses,and 322-buses power systems,employing SC-MARL for voltage control resulted in a reduction of the Voltage Out of Control Rate(%V.out)from0.43,0.24,and 2.95 to 0,0.01,and 0.03,respectively.Additionally,the Reactive Power Loss(Q loss)decreased from 0.095,0.547,and 0.017 to 0.062,0.452,and 0.016 in the corresponding systems.

A survey on multi-agent reinforcement learning and its application

Multi-agent reinforcement learning(MARL)has been a rapidly evolving field.This paper presents a comprehensive survey of MARL and its applications.We trace the historical evolution of MARL,highlight its progress,and discuss related survey works.Then,we review the existing works addressing inherent challenges and those focusing on diverse applications.Some representative stochastic games,MARL means,spatial forms of MARL,and task classification are revisited.We then conduct an in-depth exploration of a variety of challenges encountered in MARL applications.We also address critical operational aspects,such as hyperparameter tuning and computational complexity,which are pivotal in practical implementations of MARL.Afterward,we make a thorough overview of the applications of MARL to intelligent machines and devices,chemical engineering,biotechnology,healthcare,and societal issues,which highlights the extensive potential and relevance of MARL within both current and future technological contexts.Our survey also encompasses a detailed examination of benchmark environments used in MARL research,which are instrumental in evaluating MARL algorithms and demonstrate the adaptability of MARL to diverse application scenarios.In the end,we give our prospect for MARL and discuss their related techniques and potential future applications.

Performance Evaluation ofMulti-Agent Reinforcement Learning Algorithms

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning(MARL)has proven to be successful in cooperative assignments.MARL is used to investigate how autonomous agents with the same interests can connect and act in one team.MARL cooperation scenarios are explored in recreational cooperative augmented reality environments,as well as realworld scenarios in robotics.In this paper,we explore the realm of MARL and its potential applications in cooperative assignments.Our focus is on developing a multi-agent system that can collaborate to attack or defend against enemies and achieve victory withminimal damage.To accomplish this,we utilize the StarCraftMulti-Agent Challenge(SMAC)environment and train four MARL algorithms:Q-learning with Mixtures of Experts(QMIX),Value-DecompositionNetwork(VDN),Multi-agent Proximal PolicyOptimizer(MAPPO),andMulti-Agent Actor Attention Critic(MAA2C).These algorithms allow multiple agents to cooperate in a specific scenario to achieve the targeted mission.Our results show that the QMIX algorithm outperforms the other three algorithms in the attacking scenario,while the VDN algorithm achieves the best results in the defending scenario.Specifically,the VDNalgorithmreaches the highest value of battle wonmean and the lowest value of dead alliesmean.Our research demonstrates the potential forMARL algorithms to be used in real-world applications,such as controllingmultiple robots to provide helpful services or coordinating teams of agents to accomplish tasks that would be impossible for a human to do.The SMAC environment provides a unique opportunity to test and evaluate MARL algorithms in a challenging and dynamic environment,and our results show that these algorithms can be used to achieve victory with minimal damage.

Privacy Preserving Demand Side Management Method via Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

The smart grid utilizes the demand side management technology to motivate energy users towards cutting demand during peak power consumption periods, which greatly improves the operation efficiency of the power grid. However, as the number of energy users participating in the smart grid continues to increase, the demand side management strategy of individual agent is greatly affected by the dynamic strategies of other agents. In addition, the existing demand side management methods, which need to obtain users’ power consumption information,seriously threaten the users’ privacy. To address the dynamic issue in the multi-microgrid demand side management model, a novel multi-agent reinforcement learning method based on centralized training and decentralized execution paradigm is presented to mitigate the damage of training performance caused by the instability of training experience. In order to protect users’ privacy, we design a neural network with fixed parameters as the encryptor to transform the users’ energy consumption information from low-dimensional to high-dimensional and theoretically prove that the proposed encryptor-based privacy preserving method will not affect the convergence property of the reinforcement learning algorithm. We verify the effectiveness of the proposed demand side management scheme with the real-world energy consumption data of Xi’an, Shaanxi, China. Simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively improve users’ satisfaction while reducing the bill payment compared with traditional reinforcement learning(RL) methods(i.e., deep Q learning(DQN), deep deterministic policy gradient(DDPG),QMIX and multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient(MADDPG)). The results also demonstrate that the proposed privacy protection scheme can effectively protect users’ privacy while ensuring the performance of the algorithm.

Cooperative multi-target hunting by unmanned surface vehicles based on multi-agent reinforcement learning

To solve the problem of multi-target hunting by an unmanned surface vehicle(USV)fleet,a hunting algorithm based on multi-agent reinforcement learning is proposed.Firstly,the hunting environment and kinematic model without boundary constraints are built,and the criteria for successful target capture are given.Then,the cooperative hunting problem of a USV fleet is modeled as a decentralized partially observable Markov decision process(Dec-POMDP),and a distributed partially observable multitarget hunting Proximal Policy Optimization(DPOMH-PPO)algorithm applicable to USVs is proposed.In addition,an observation model,a reward function and the action space applicable to multi-target hunting tasks are designed.To deal with the dynamic change of observational feature dimension input by partially observable systems,a feature embedding block is proposed.By combining the two feature compression methods of column-wise max pooling(CMP)and column-wise average-pooling(CAP),observational feature encoding is established.Finally,the centralized training and decentralized execution framework is adopted to complete the training of hunting strategy.Each USV in the fleet shares the same policy and perform actions independently.Simulation experiments have verified the effectiveness of the DPOMH-PPO algorithm in the test scenarios with different numbers of USVs.Moreover,the advantages of the proposed model are comprehensively analyzed from the aspects of algorithm performance,migration effect in task scenarios and self-organization capability after being damaged,the potential deployment and application of DPOMH-PPO in the real environment is verified.

Communication-Efficient Decision-Making of Digital Twin Assisted Internet of Vehicles: A Hierarchical Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Approach

The connected autonomous vehicle is considered an effective way to improve transport safety and efficiency.To overcome the limited sensing and computing capabilities of individual vehicles,we design a digital twin assisted decision-making framework for Internet of Vehicles,by leveraging the integration of communication,sensing and computing.In this framework,the digital twin entities residing on edge can effectively communicate and cooperate with each other to plan sub-targets for their respective vehicles,while the vehicles only need to achieve the sub-targets by generating a sequence of atomic actions.Furthermore,we propose a hierarchical multiagent reinforcement learning approach to implement the framework,which can be trained in an end-to-end way.In the proposed approach,the communication interval of digital twin entities could adapt to timevarying environment.Extensive experiments on driving decision-making have been performed in traffic junction scenarios of different difficulties.The experimental results show that the proposed approach can largely improve collaboration efficiency while reducing communication overhead.

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Resource Allocation in Io T Networks with Edge Computing

To support popular Internet of Things(IoT)applications such as virtual reality and mobile games,edge computing provides a front-end distributed computing archetype of centralized cloud computing with low latency and distributed data processing.However,it is challenging for multiple users to offload their computation tasks because they are competing for spectrum and computation as well as Radio Access Technologies(RAT)resources.In this paper,we investigate computation offloading mechanism of multiple selfish users with resource allocation in IoT edge computing networks by formulating it as a stochastic game.Each user is a learning agent observing its local network environment to learn optimal decisions on either local computing or edge computing with a goal of minimizing long term system cost by choosing its transmit power level,RAT and sub-channel without knowing any information of the other users.Since users’decisions are coupling at the gateway,we define the reward function of each user by considering the aggregated effect of other users.Therefore,a multi-agent reinforcement learning framework is developed to solve the game with the proposed Independent Learners based Multi-Agent Q-learning(IL-based MA-Q)algorithm.Simulations demonstrate that the proposed IL-based MA-Q algorithm is feasible to solve the formulated problem and is more energy efficient without extra cost on channel estimation at the centralized gateway.Finally,compared with the other three benchmark algorithms,it has better system cost performance and achieves distributed computation offloading.

Knowledge transfer in multi-agent reinforcement learning with incremental number of agents

In this paper, the reinforcement learning method for cooperative multi-agent systems(MAS) with incremental number of agents is studied. The existing multi-agent reinforcement learning approaches deal with the MAS with a specific number of agents, and can learn well-performed policies. However, if there is an increasing number of agents, the previously learned in may not perform well in the current scenario. The new agents need to learn from scratch to find optimal policies with others,which may slow down the learning speed of the whole team. To solve that problem, in this paper, we propose a new algorithm to take full advantage of the historical knowledge which was learned before, and transfer it from the previous agents to the new agents. Since the previous agents have been trained well in the source environment, they are treated as teacher agents in the target environment. Correspondingly, the new agents are called student agents. To enable the student agents to learn from the teacher agents, we first modify the input nodes of the networks for teacher agents to adapt to the current environment. Then, the teacher agents take the observations of the student agents as input, and output the advised actions and values as supervising information. Finally, the student agents combine the reward from the environment and the supervising information from the teacher agents, and learn the optimal policies with modified loss functions. By taking full advantage of the knowledge of teacher agents, the search space for the student agents will be reduced significantly, which can accelerate the learning speed of the holistic system. The proposed algorithm is verified in some multi-agent simulation environments, and its efficiency has been demonstrated by the experiment results.

Multi-agent reinforcement learning for edge information sharing in vehicular networks

To guarantee the heterogeneous delay requirements of the diverse vehicular services,it is necessary to design a full cooperative policy for both Vehicle to Infrastructure(V2I)and Vehicle to Vehicle(V2V)links.This paper investigates the reduction of the delay in edge information sharing for V2V links while satisfying the delay requirements of the V2I links.Specifically,a mean delay minimization problem and a maximum individual delay minimization problem are formulated to improve the global network performance and ensure the fairness of a single user,respectively.A multi-agent reinforcement learning framework is designed to solve these two problems,where a new reward function is proposed to evaluate the utilities of the two optimization objectives in a unified framework.Thereafter,a proximal policy optimization approach is proposed to enable each V2V user to learn its policy using the shared global network reward.The effectiveness of the proposed approach is finally validated by comparing the obtained results with those of the other baseline approaches through extensive simulation experiments.

A Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning-Based Collaborative Jamming System: Algorithm Design and Software-Defined Radio Implementation

In multi-agent confrontation scenarios, a jammer is constrained by the single limited performance and inefficiency of practical application. To cope with these issues, this paper aims to investigate the multi-agent jamming problem in a multi-user scenario, where the coordination between the jammers is considered. Firstly, a multi-agent Markov decision process (MDP) framework is used to model and analyze the multi-agent jamming problem. Secondly, a collaborative multi-agent jamming algorithm (CMJA) based on reinforcement learning is proposed. Finally, an actual intelligent jamming system is designed and built based on software-defined radio (SDR) platform for simulation and platform verification. The simulation and platform verification results show that the proposed CMJA algorithm outperforms the independent Q-learning method and provides a better jamming effect.

UAV cooperative air combat maneuver decision based on multi-agent reinforcement learning

In order to improve the autonomous ability of unmanned aerial vehicles(UAV)to implement air combat mission,many artificial intelligence-based autonomous air combat maneuver decision-making studies have been carried out,but these studies are often aimed at individual decision-making in 1 v1 scenarios which rarely happen in actual air combat.Based on the research of the 1 v1 autonomous air combat maneuver decision,this paper builds a multi-UAV cooperative air combat maneuver decision model based on multi-agent reinforcement learning.Firstly,a bidirectional recurrent neural network(BRNN)is used to achieve communication between UAV individuals,and the multi-UAV cooperative air combat maneuver decision model under the actor-critic architecture is established.Secondly,through combining with target allocation and air combat situation assessment,the tactical goal of the formation is merged with the reinforcement learning goal of every UAV,and a cooperative tactical maneuver policy is generated.The simulation results prove that the multi-UAV cooperative air combat maneuver decision model established in this paper can obtain the cooperative maneuver policy through reinforcement learning,the cooperative maneuver policy can guide UAVs to obtain the overall situational advantage and defeat the opponents under tactical cooperation.

A single-task and multi-decision evolutionary game model based on multi-agent reinforcement learning

In the evolutionary game of the same task for groups,the changes in game rules,personal interests,the crowd size,and external supervision cause uncertain effects on individual decision-making and game results.In the Markov decision framework,a single-task multi-decision evolutionary game model based on multi-agent reinforcement learning is proposed to explore the evolutionary rules in the process of a game.The model can improve the result of a evolutionary game and facilitate the completion of the task.First,based on the multi-agent theory,to solve the existing problems in the original model,a negative feedback tax penalty mechanism is proposed to guide the strategy selection of individuals in the group.In addition,in order to evaluate the evolutionary game results of the group in the model,a calculation method of the group intelligence level is defined.Secondly,the Q-learning algorithm is used to improve the guiding effect of the negative feedback tax penalty mechanism.In the model,the selection strategy of the Q-learning algorithm is improved and a bounded rationality evolutionary game strategy is proposed based on the rule of evolutionary games and the consideration of the bounded rationality of individuals.Finally,simulation results show that the proposed model can effectively guide individuals to choose cooperation strategies which are beneficial to task completion and stability under different negative feedback factor values and different group sizes,so as to improve the group intelligence level.

Collaborative multi-agent reinforcement learning based on experience propagation

For multi-agent reinforcement learning in Markov games, knowledge extraction and sharing are key research problems. State list extracting means to calculate the optimal shared state path from state trajectories with cycles. A state list extracting algorithm checks cyclic state lists of a current state in the state trajectory, condensing the optimal action set of the current state. By reinforcing the optimal action selected, the action policy of cyclic states is optimized gradually. The state list extracting is repeatedly learned and used as the experience knowledge which is shared by teams. Agents speed up the rate of convergence by experience sharing. Competition games of preys and predators are used for the experiments. The results of experiments prove that the proposed algorithms overcome the lack of experience in the initial stage, speed up learning and improve the performance.

Efficient Exploration for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning via Transferable Successor Features

In multi-agent reinforcement learning(MARL),the behaviors of each agent can influence the learning of others,and the agents have to search in an exponentially enlarged joint-action space.Hence,it is challenging for the multi-agent teams to explore in the environment.Agents may achieve suboptimal policies and fail to solve some complex tasks.To improve the exploring efficiency as well as the performance of MARL tasks,in this paper,we propose a new approach by transferring the knowledge across tasks.Differently from the traditional MARL algorithms,we first assume that the reward functions can be computed by linear combinations of a shared feature function and a set of taskspecific weights.Then,we define a set of basic MARL tasks in the source domain and pre-train them as the basic knowledge for further use.Finally,once the weights for target tasks are available,it will be easier to get a well-performed policy to explore in the target domain.Hence,the learning process of agents for target tasks is speeded up by taking full use of the basic knowledge that was learned previously.We evaluate the proposed algorithm on two challenging MARL tasks:cooperative boxpushing and non-monotonic predator-prey.The experiment results have demonstrated the improved performance compared with state-of-the-art MARL algorithms.

A new accelerating algorithm for multi-agent reinforcement learning

In multi-agent systems, joint-action must be employed to achieve cooperation because the evaluation of the behavior of an agent often depends on the other agents’ behaviors. However, joint-action reinforcement learning algorithms suffer the slow convergence rate because of the enormous learning space produced by joint-action. In this article, a prediction-based reinforcement learning algorithm is presented for multi-agent cooperation tasks, which demands all agents to learn predicting the probabilities of actions that other agents may execute. A multi-robot cooperation experiment is run to test the efficacy of the new algorithm, and the experiment results show that the new algorithm can achieve the cooperation policy much faster than the primitive reinforcement learning algorithm.

Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Algorithm Based on Action Prediction

Multl-agent reinforcement learning algorithms are studied. A prediction-based multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm is presented for multl-robot cooperation task. The multi-robot cooperation experiment based on multi-agent inverted pendulum is made to test the efficency of the new algorithm, and the experiment results show that the new algorithm can achieve the cooperation strategy much faster than the primitive multiagent reinforcement learning algorithm.

Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Constraint-Reduced DCOP

Cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning（ MARL） is an important topic in the field of artificial intelligence,in which distributed constraint optimization（ DCOP） algorithms have been widely used to coordinate the actions of multiple agents. However,dense communication among agents affects the practicability of DCOP algorithms. In this paper,we propose a novel DCOP algorithm dealing with the previous DCOP algorithms＇ communication problem by reducing constraints.The contributions of this paper are primarily threefold：（1） It is proved that removing constraints can effectively reduce the communication burden of DCOP algorithms.（2） An criterion is provided to identify insignificant constraints whose elimination doesn＇t have a great impact on the performance of the whole system.（3） A constraint-reduced DCOP algorithm is proposed by adopting a variant of spectral clustering algorithm to detect and eliminate the insignificant constraints. Our algorithm reduces the communication burdern of the benchmark DCOP algorithm while keeping its overall performance unaffected. The performance of constraint-reduced DCOP algorithm is evaluated on four configurations of cooperative sensor networks. The effectiveness of communication reduction is also verified by comparisons between the constraint-reduced DCOP and the benchmark DCOP.