An Open-Ended Learning Framework for Opponent Modeling
Yuheng Jing, Kai Li, Bingyun Liu, Haobo Fu, Qiang Fu, Junliang Xing, Jian Cheng
Abstract
Opponent Modeling (OM) aims to enhance decision-making by modeling other agents in multi-agent environments. Existing works typically learn opponent models against a pre-designated fixed set of opponents during training. However, this will cause poor generalization when facing unknown opponents during testing, as previously unseen opponents can exhibit out-of-distribution (OOD) behaviors that the learned opponent models cannot handle. To tackle this problem, we introduce a novel Open-Ended Opponent Modeling (OEOM) framework, which continuously generates opponents with diverse strengths and styles to reduce the possibility of OOD situations occurring during testing. Founded on population-based training and information-theoretic trajectory space diversity regularization, OEOM generates a dynamic set of opponents. This set is then fed to any OM approaches to train a potentially generalizable opponent model. Upon this, we further propose a simple yet effective OM approach that naturally fits within the OEOM framework. This approach is based on in-context reinforcement learning and learns a Transformer that dynamically recognizes and responds to opponents based on their trajectories. Extensive experiments in cooperative, competitive, and mixed environments demonstrate that OEOM is an approach-agnostic framework that improves generalizability compared to training against a fixed set of opponents, regardless of OM approaches or testing opponent settings. The results also indicate that our proposed approach generally outperforms existing OM baselines.
BibTeX
@article{Jing_Li_Liu_Fu_Fu_Xing_Cheng_2025, title={An Open-Ended Learning Framework for Opponent Modeling}, volume={39}, url={https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/34488}, DOI={10.1609/aaai.v39i22.34488}, abstractNote={Opponent Modeling (OM) aims to enhance decision-making by modeling other agents in multi-agent environments. Existing works typically learn opponent models against a pre-designated fixed set of opponents during training. However, this will cause poor generalization when facing unknown opponents during testing, as previously unseen opponents can exhibit out-of-distribution (OOD) behaviors that the learned opponent models cannot handle. To tackle this problem, we introduce a novel Open-Ended Opponent Modeling (OEOM) framework, which continuously generates opponents with diverse strengths and styles to reduce the possibility of OOD situations occurring during testing. Founded on population-based training and information-theoretic trajectory space diversity regularization, OEOM generates a dynamic set of opponents. This set is then fed to any OM approaches to train a potentially generalizable opponent model. Upon this, we further propose a simple yet effective OM approach that naturally fits within the OEOM framework. This approach is based on in-context reinforcement learning and learns a Transformer that dynamically recognizes and responds to opponents based on their trajectories. Extensive experiments in cooperative, competitive, and mixed environments demonstrate that OEOM is an approach-agnostic framework that improves generalizability compared to training against a fixed set of opponents, regardless of OM approaches or testing opponent settings. The results also indicate that our proposed approach generally outperforms existing OM baselines.}, number={22}, journal={Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence}, author={Jing, Yuheng and Li, Kai and Liu, Bingyun and Fu, Haobo and Fu, Qiang and Xing, Junliang and Cheng, Jian}, year={2025}, month={Apr.}, pages={23222-23230} }