Heterogeneous Multi-agent Zero-Shot Coordination by Coevolution
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Abstract (arXiv)
Generating agents that can achieve zero-shot coordination (ZSC) with unseen partners is a new challenge in cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL). Recently, some studies have made progress in ZSC by exposing the agents to diverse partners during the training process. They usually involve self-play when training the partners, implicitly assuming that the tasks are homogeneous. However, many real-world tasks are heterogeneous, and hence previous methods may be inefficient. In this paper, we study the heterogeneous ZSC problem for the first time and propose a general method based on coevolution, which coevolves two populations of agents and partners through three sub-processes: pairing, updating and selection. Experimental results on various heterogeneous tasks highlight the necessity of considering the heterogeneous setting and demonstrate that our proposed method is a promising solution for heterogeneous ZSC tasks.
Key facts. Cited by 12 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 34 of its 70 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 9 Aug 2022.
Builds on
34 of 70 references.
References · 34
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2023: 7; 2024: 1; 2025: 3; 2026: 1.
12 papers.
- 2023Cooperative Open-ended Learning Framework for Zero-shot Coordinationcited by 30
- 2023ZSC-Eval: An Evaluation Toolkit and Benchmark for Multi-agent Zero-shot Coordinationcited by 24
- 2023Robust multi-agent coordination via evolutionary generation of auxiliary adversarial attackerscited by 15
- 2023Tackling Cooperative Incompatibility for Zero-Shot Human-AI Coordinationcited by 12
- 2023Multi-agent Continual Coordination via Progressive Task Contextualizationcited by 11
- 2023Efficient Human-AI Coordination via Preparatory Language-based Conventioncited by 7
- 2023Communication-Robust Multi-Agent Learning by Adaptable Auxiliary Multi-Agent Adversary Generationcited by 6
- 2025The Yokai Learning Environment: Tracking Beliefs Over Space and Timecited by 3
- 2024HOLA-Drone: Hypergraphic Open-ended Learning for Zero-Shot Multi-Drone Cooperative Pursuitcited by 1
- 2025Generalizable Agent Modeling for Agent Collaboration-Competition Adaptation with Multi-Retrieval and Dynamic Generationcited by 0
- 2025CooT: Learning to Coordinate In-Context with Coordination Transformerscited by 0
- 2026Zero Shot Coordination for Sparse Reward Tasks with Diverse Reward Shapingscited by 0
- 2026Zero Shot Coordination for Sparse Reward Tasks with Diverse Reward Shapings28 Apr 2026
- 2025The Yokai Learning Environment: Tracking Beliefs Over Space and Time17 Aug 2025
- 2025CooT: Learning to Coordinate In-Context with Coordination Transformers30 Jun 2025
- 2025Generalizable Agent Modeling for Agent Collaboration-Competition Adaptation with Multi-Retrieval and Dynamic Generation20 Jun 2025
- 2024HOLA-Drone: Hypergraphic Open-ended Learning for Zero-Shot Multi-Drone Cooperative Pursuit13 Sep 2024
- 2023Efficient Human-AI Coordination via Preparatory Language-based Convention1 Nov 2023
- 2023ZSC-Eval: An Evaluation Toolkit and Benchmark for Multi-agent Zero-shot Coordination8 Oct 2023
- 2023Tackling Cooperative Incompatibility for Zero-Shot Human-AI Coordination5 Jun 2023
- 2023Robust multi-agent coordination via evolutionary generation of auxiliary adversarial attackers10 May 2023
- 2023Communication-Robust Multi-Agent Learning by Adaptable Auxiliary Multi-Agent Adversary Generation9 May 2023
- 2023Multi-agent Continual Coordination via Progressive Task Contextualization7 May 2023
- 2023Cooperative Open-ended Learning Framework for Zero-shot Coordination9 Feb 2023