Automata-Conditioned Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

We study learning multi-task, multi-agent policies for cooperative, temporal objectives, under centralized training, decentralized execution. In this setting, using automata to represent tasks assigned to agents enables breaking down a team-level objective into simpler, smaller sub-tasks. However, existing approaches remain sample-inefficient and are limited to the single-task case, requiring retraining policies for each new task. In this work, we present Automata-Conditioned Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (ACC-MARL), a framework for learning task-conditioned, decentralized team policies. We identify the main challenges to the feasibility of ACC-MARL, propose solutions, and prove that our approach is optimal. We further show that learned value functions can be used to assign tasks optimally at test time. Experiments demonstrate emergent task-aware, multi-step coordination among agents, such as pressing a button to unlock a door, holding the door, and short-circuiting tasks.