Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics ›› 2013, Vol. 24 ›› Issue (4): 683-689.doi: 10.1109/JSEE.2013.00079

• SOFTWARE ALGORITHM AND SIMULATION • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Collaborative multi-agent reinforcement learning based on experience propagation

Min Fang1,* and Frans C.A. Groen2   

  1. 1. School of Computer Science and Technology, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China;
    2. Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1098 XH, Netherlands
  • Online:2013-08-21 Published:2010-01-03

Abstract:

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.